Ray Kurzweil - How to Create a Mind - The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

Redundancy, as we have learned, is a key strategy deployed by the neocortex. But there is another level of redundancy in the brain, in that its left and right hemispheres, while not identical, are largely the same. Just as certain regions of the neocortex normally end up processing certain types of information, the hemispheres also specialize to some extent—for example, the left hemisphere typically is responsible for verbal language. But these assignments can also be rerouted, to the point that we can survive and function somewhat normally with only one half. American neuropsychology researchers Stella de Bode and Susan Curtiss reported on forty-nine children who had undergone a hemispherectomy (removal of half of their brain), an extreme operation that is performed on patients with a life-threatening seizure disorder that exists in only one hemisphere. Some who undergo the procedure are left with deficits, but those deficits are specific and the patients have reasonably normal personalities. Many of them thrive, and it is not apparent to observers that they only have half a brain. De Bode and Curtiss write about left-hemispherectomized children who “develop remarkably good language despite removal of the ‘language’ hemisphere.” 9 They describe one such student who completed college, attended graduate school, and scored above average on IQ tests. Studies have shown minimal long-term effects on overall cognition, memory, personality, and sense of humor. 10 In a 2007 study American researchers Shearwood McClelland and Robert Maxwell showed similar long-term positive results in adults. 11

A ten-year-old German girl who was born with only half of her brain has also been reported to be quite normal. She even has almost perfect vision in one eye, whereas hemispherectomy patients lose part of their field of vision right after the operation. 12 Scottish researcher Lars Muckli commented, “The brain has amazing plasticity but we were quite astonished to see just how well the single hemisphere of the brain in this girl has adapted to compensate for the missing half.”

While these observations certainly support the idea of plasticity in the neocortex, their more interesting implication is that we each appear to have two brains, not one, and we can do pretty well with either. If we lose one, we do lose the cortical patterns that are uniquely stored there, but each brain is in itself fairly complete. So does each hemisphere have its own consciousness? There is an argument to be made that such is the case.

Consider split-brain patients, who still have both of their brain hemispheres, but the channel between them has been cut. The corpus callosum is a bundle of about 250 million axons that connects the left and right cerebral hemispheres and enables them to communicate and coordinate with each other. Just as two people can communicate closely with each other and act as a single decision maker while remaining separate and whole individuals, the two brain hemispheres can function as a unit while remaining independent.

As the term implies, in split-brain patients the corpus callosum has been cut or damaged, leaving them effectively with two functional brains without a direct communication link between them. American psychology researcher Michael Gazzaniga (born in 1939) has conducted extensive experiments on what each hemisphere in split-brain patients is thinking.

The left hemisphere in a split-brain patient usually sees the right visual field, and vice versa. Gazzaniga and his colleagues showed a split-brain patient a picture of a chicken claw to the right visual field (which was seen by his left hemisphere) and a snowy scene to the left visual field (which was seen by his right hemisphere). He then showed a collection of pictures so that both hemispheres could see them. He asked the patient to choose one of the pictures that went well with the first picture. The patient’s left hand (controlled by his right hemisphere) pointed to a picture of a shovel, whereas his right hand pointed to a picture of a chicken. So far so good—the two hemispheres were acting independently and sensibly. “Why did you choose that?” Gazzaniga asked the patient, who answered verbally (controlled by his left-hemisphere speech center), “The chicken claw obviously goes with the chicken.” But then the patient looked down and, noticing his left hand pointing to the shovel, immediately explained this (again with his left-hemisphere-controlled speech center) as “and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.”

This is a confabulation. The right hemisphere (which controls the left arm and hand) correctly points to the shovel, but because the left hemisphere (which controls the verbal answer) is unaware of the snow, it confabulates an explanation, yet is not aware that it is confabulating. It is taking responsibility for an action it had never decided on and never took, but thinks that it did.

This implies that each of the two hemispheres in a split-brain patient has its own consciousness. The hemispheres appear not to be aware that their body is effectively controlled by two brains, because they learn to coordinate with each other, and their decisions are sufficiently aligned and consistent that each thinks that the decisions of the other are its own.

Gazzaniga’s experiment doesn’t prove that a normal individual with a functioning corpus callosum has two conscious half-brains, but it is suggestive of that possibility. While the corpus callosum allows for effective collaboration between the two half-brains, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are not separate minds. Each one could be fooled into thinking it has made all the decisions, because they would all be close enough to what each would have decided on its own, and after all, it does have a lot of influence on each decision (by collaborating with the other hemisphere through the corpus callosum). So to each of the two minds it would seem as if it were in control.

How would you test the conjecture that they are both conscious? One could assess them for neurological correlates of consciousness, which is precisely what Gazzaniga has done. His experiments show that each hemisphere is acting as an independent brain. Confabulation is not restricted to brain hemispheres; we each do it on a regular basis. Each hemisphere is about as intelligent as a human, so if we believe that a human brain is conscious, then we have to conclude that each hemisphere is independently conscious. We can assess the neurological correlates and we can conduct our own thought experiments (for example, considering that if two brain hemispheres without a functioning corpus callosum constitute two separate conscious minds, then the same would have to hold true for two hemispheres with a functioning connection between them), but any attempt at a more direct detection of consciousness in each hemisphere confronts us again with the lack of a scientific test for consciousness. But if we do allow that each hemisphere of the brain is conscious, then do we grant that the so-called unconscious activity in the neocortex (which constitutes the vast bulk of its activity) has an independent consciousness too? Or maybe it has more than one? Indeed, Marvin Minsky refers to the brain as a “society of mind.” 13