Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagYair Pinto

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Multiracial team of professional medical surgeons performs the surgical operation in a modern hospital. Doctors are working to save the patient. Medicine, health and neurosurgery.

How a Split Brain Enables a Unified Mind Still Baffles Us

In the comments following Sean McDowell’s interview with neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, a viewer asked, are the parts of a split brain still really connected?
We are learning new things about the mind–brain complex every day and not everything is what we expected to find. Read More ›
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Hemispheres of the brain front view

How Can We Know If Patients With Split Brains Have a Single Mind?

Just ask them

Readers have brought to my attention a review article on the effect of split-brain surgery on consciousness. “Split-Brain: What We Know Now and Why This is Important for Understanding Consciousness” (2020) by Yair Pinto and his colleagues is an interesting open-access article, well worth reading for anyone interested in the topic. From the abstract: [Split-brain surgery] leads to a broad breakdown of functional integration ranging from perception to attention. However, the breakdown is not absolute as several processes, such as action control, seem to remain unified. Disagreement exists about the responsible mechanisms for this remaining unity. The main issue concerns the first-person perspective of a split-brain patient. Does a split-brain harbor a split consciousness or is consciousness unified? The current Read More ›

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A team of surgeons performing brain surgery to remove a tumor.

Does Surgically Splitting the Brain Make One Person Into Two?

A prominent neurosurgeon writes of his “amazement” at discovering that the patient with a split brain is still a single individual
Unity of self after brain splitting is not surprising. Each of us is a physical creature with a single spiritual soul. It is immaterial and can’t be severed. Read More ›