Brains Are CRAAAAAZY

In the rare cases of extremely severe epilepsy, a surgery may be considered to alleviate the pain. This procedure involves severing the corpus callosum, an area of the brain allowing cross-hemisphere communication. A side effect of this is best described in the form of an experiment. A woman with a severed corpus callosum was told to focus on the center of a monitor where images would briefly flash. She was then asked to identify these images. If the images appeared to the right of the screen, she was able to identify them with no problem. This is because images on the right were registered in the left hemisphere of her brain (where speech centers are). Therefore she was able to say aloud "cat", "dog" or "sailboat" depending on what images were shown to her. But when images were flashed on the left side of the screen, she was unable to vocalize what it was she had seen. The right side of her brain was unable to communicate to the left side what it was she was seeing, so her speech centers couldn't verbalize anything. Here's where it gets AWESOME. When asked to write down what it was she had seen, she couldn't, because she was right-handed. The right hand is controlled by the left hemisphere, and since the left hemisphere still had no information, the right hand could not write down the image. When she picked up the pen in her left hand, she was able to write it down with no problem. Brains Are CRAAAAAZY.