The real cognitive neuroscience behind ‘Severance’

THIS IS AN ARTICLE reprinted from Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Do not quitwhich imagines a world where one’s work and personal life are surgically separated, returns on Friday with its long-awaited second season. Although the concept of this compelling piece of science fiction is far-fetched, it addresses a question that neuroscience has been trying to answer for decades: Can the human mind really be split in two?

Interestingly, there are “split brain” patients From the 1940s. In order to control epileptic symptoms, these patients underwent surgery to separate the left and right hemispheres. Similar operations it still happens today.

Further research Such surgery has shown that the separated hemispheres of split-brain patients can process information independently. This raises the disturbing possibility that the procedure could create two separate minds inhabiting one brain.

In the first season Do not quitHelly R (Britt Lower) is conflicted between her “innie” (the side of her mind that remembers her work life) and her “outie” (the non-work side). Likewise, there is evidence the conflict between the two hemispheres of real split brain patients.

When speaking with split brain patients, you usually communicate with the left hemisphere of the brain, which controls speech. However, some patients can communicate from their right hemisphere, for example by writing or arranging Scrabble letters.

Young patient in one study they asked what kind of work you want to do in the future. His left hemisphere chose an office job to prepare technical drawings. But his right hemisphere arranged the letters to spell “car racer.”

Split brain patients also reported “alien hand syndrome,” one of his hands is felt to move of its own volition. These observations show that two separate conscious “people” can coexist in the same brain and have conflicting goals.

In Do not quithowever, both innie and outie are capable of speech. This is an indication that the fictitious “disruption procedure” involves a more complex separation of brain networks.

An example of complex separation of functions is described Neil’s claim reportIn 1994. Neil was a teenage boy who faced a series of challenges after suffering from a pineal gland tumor. One of those challenges was a rare form of amnesia. This meant that Neil couldn’t remember the events of his day or talk about what he had learned at school. Although he could write, he could not read, and although he could draw objects, he could not name them.

Amazingly, Neil was able to keep up with his studies. The researchers wondered how he was able to complete his schoolwork despite not remembering what he had learned. He was asked about a novel he read at school, Cedar with Rosie By Laurie Lee. During the conversation, Neil couldn’t remember anything about the book, not even the title. But when a researcher asked Neil to write down everything he could remember about the book, he wrote, “Bloodshot Geranium windows Cider with Rosie Dranium smell of wet peppar (sic) and mushroom growth” – all words associated with the novel. Since Neil couldn’t read, he had to ask the researcher, “What did I write?”