THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Dialog underneath a Artistic Commons license.
Severance, which imagines a world the place an individual’s work and private lives are surgically separated, returns Friday for its long-awaited second season. Whereas the idea of this gripping piece of science fiction is far-fetched, it touches on a query neuroscience has been attempting to reply for many years: Can an individual’s thoughts actually be break up in two?
Remarkably, “split-brain” sufferers have existed for the reason that Forties. To manage epilepsy signs, these sufferers underwent a surgical procedure to separate the left and proper hemispheres. Related surgical procedures nonetheless occur at present.
Later analysis on any such surgical procedure confirmed that the separated hemispheres of split-brain sufferers might course of data independently. This raises the uncomfortable risk that the process creates two separate minds dwelling in a single mind.
In season one in every of Severance, Helly R (Britt Decrease) skilled a battle between her “innie” (the aspect of her thoughts that remembered her work life) and her “outie” (the aspect exterior of labor). Equally, there’s proof of a battle between the 2 hemispheres of actual split-brain sufferers.
When talking with split-brain sufferers, you’re often speaking with the left hemisphere of the mind, which controls speech. Nevertheless, some sufferers can talk from their proper hemisphere by writing, for instance, or by arranging Scrabble letters.
A younger affected person in a single research was requested what job he would love sooner or later. His left hemisphere selected an workplace job making technical drawings. His proper hemisphere, nonetheless, organized letters to spell “vehicle racer.”
Break up-brain sufferers have additionally reported “alien hand syndrome,” the place one in every of their fingers is perceived to be transferring of its personal volition. These observations counsel that two separate aware “individuals” could coexist in a single mind and will have conflicting objectives.
In Severance, nonetheless, each the innie and the outie have entry to speech. That is one indicator that the fictional “severance process” should contain a extra complicated separation of the mind’s networks.
An instance of a fancy separation of operate was described in the case report of Neil, in 1994. Neil was a teenage boy who had plenty of difficulties following a pineal gland tumor. One in all these difficulties was a uncommon type of amnesia. It meant that Neil couldn’t recall the occasions of his day or report what he had realized at school. He had additionally change into unable to learn, though he might write, and he was unable to call objects, though he might draw them.
Astonishingly, Neil was capable of sustain together with his schooling. Researchers grew to become excited by how he was capable of full his schoolwork regardless of having no reminiscence of what he was studying. They quizzed him a few novel he was learning in school, Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee. In dialog, Neil couldn’t keep in mind something in regards to the e-book—not even the title. However when a researcher requested Neil to jot down down every part he might keep in mind in regards to the e-book, he wrote “Bloodshot Geranium home windows Cider with Rosie Dranium scent of damp peppar [sic] and mushroom development”—all phrases linked to the novel. As Neil couldn’t learn, he needed to ask the researcher: “What did I write?”