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Concept
Dual consciousness
Summary
Dual consciousness is a theoretical concept in neuroscience. It is proposed that it is possible that a person may develop two separate conscious entities within their one brain after undergoing a corpus callosotomy. The idea first began circulating in the neuroscience community after some split-brain patients exhibited the alien hand syndrome, which led some scientists to believe that there must be two separate consciousnesses within the brain's left and right hemispheres in competition with one another once the corpus callosum is severed.
The idea of dual consciousness has caused controversy in the neuroscience community. No conclusive evidence of the proposed phenomenon has been discovered.
During the first half of the 20th century, some neurosurgeons concluded that the best option of treating severe epilepsy was by severing the patient's corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is the primary communication mechanism between the brain's two cerebral hemispheres. For example, communication across the callosum allows information from both the left and right visual fields to be interpreted by the brain in a way that makes sense to comprehend the person's actual experience (visual inputs from both eyes are interpreted by the brain to make sense of the experience that you are looking at a computer that is directly in front of you). The procedure of surgically removing the corpus callosum is called a corpus callosotomy. Patients who have undergone a corpus callosotomy are colloquially referred to as "split-brain patients". They are called so because now their brain's left and right hemispheres are no longer connected by the corpus callosum.
Split-brain patients have been subjects for numerous psychological experiments that sought to discover what occurs in the brain now that the primary interhemispheric pathways have been disrupted. Notable researchers in the field include Roger Sperry, one of the first to publish ideas involving a dual consciousness, and his famous graduate student, Michael Gazzaniga.
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