Yes, Jerry. Split brains are weird, but not the way you think

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January 17, 2020

Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism

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Recently, Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne was holding forth on split brains, arguing that “perhaps the notion of consciousness and of will are things that merely report to us after the fact the deterministic actions of our brain, and are not in any way part of a causal chain.”

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, who knows some details about the brain, responds:

Split surgery, called commissurotomy by neurosurgeons, is an operation that treats certain kinds of seizures. I’ve performed that operation myself and have taken care of the patients before and after the surgery. Beforehand, they are often incapacitated—they may have 20 or 30 seizures per day. In the surgery, we cut a portion (occasionally all) of the corpus callosum, which is a bundle of fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. This procedure prevents seizures from moving across hemispheres and usually greatly reduces their severity.
What is most remarkable about these patients—what spurred Roger Sperry to do his landmark Nobel Prize-winning research—is that after the surgery they are unaffected in everyday life, except for the diminished seizures. They are one person after the surgery, as they were before. They are basically the same, even after their brain has been functionally cut in half. They feel the same, act the same, and think the same, for all intents and purposes.
Michael Egnor, “Split brains are weird, but not the way you think” at Mind Matters News

So, Jerry? Jerry … ? Aw, never mind. He’ll be onto something else soon enough.

Meanwhile, if you enjoyed this piece, you may want to look at some of Dr. Egnor’s other recent articles on the immateriality of the mind:

How can mind interact with matter? Nature itself provides examples of how the immaterial interacts with the material.

Four researchers whose work sheds light on the reality of the mind The brain can be cut in half, but the intellect and will cannot, says Michael Egnor. The intellect and will are metaphysically simple

An Oxford neuroscientist explains Mind vs. Brain. Sharon Dirckx explains the fallacies of materialism and the logical and scientific strengths of dualism

and

What is abstract thought? A reply to Dr. Ali. Abstract thoughts cannot arise from material things because a cause cannot give what it does not have.

Comments

Whatever Seversky. Tell you what Seversky, come up with a rigid falsification criteria for Darwinian evolution and then I will believe that it qualifies as a science rather than as a unfalsifiable religion: Here are a few falsifications of Darwinian evolution that Darwinists simply refuse to ever accept as falsifications of their theory:
Darwin’s theory holds mutations to the genome to be random. The vast majority of mutations to the genome are not random but are now found to be ‘directed’. Darwin’s theory holds that Natural Selection is the ‘designer substitute’ that produces the ‘appearance’ and/or illusion of design. Natural Selection, especially for multicellular organisms, is found to grossly inadequate as the ‘designer substitute. Darwin’s theory holds that mutations to DNA will eventually change the basic biological form of any given species into a new form of a brand new species. Yet, biological form is found to be irreducible to mutations to DNA, nor is biological form reducible to any other material particulars in biology one may wish to invoke. Darwin’s theory holds there to be an extremely beneficial and flexible mutation rate for DNA which was ultimately responsible for all the diversity and complexity of life we see on earth. The mutation rate to DNA is overwhelmingly detrimental. Detrimental to such a point that it is seriously questioned whether there are any truly beneficial, information building, mutations whatsoever. Charles Darwin himself held that the gradual unfolding of life would (someday) be self-evident in the fossil record. Yet, from the Cambrian Explosion onward, the fossil record is consistently characterized by the sudden appearance of a group/kind in the fossil record(disparity), then rapid diversity within the group/kind, and then long term stability and even deterioration of variety within the overall group/kind, and within the specific species of the kind, over long periods of time. Of the few dozen or so fossils claimed as transitional, not one is uncontested as a true example of transition between major animal forms out of millions of collected fossils. Moreover, Fossils are found in the “wrong place” all the time (either too early, or too late). Darwin’s theory, due to the randomness postulate, holds that patterns will not repeat themselves in supposedly widely divergent species. Yet thousands of instances of what is ironically called ‘convergent evolution’, on both the morphological and genetic level, falsifies the Darwinian belief that patterns will not repeat themselves in widely divergent species. Charles Darwin himself stated that “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Yet as Doug Axe pointed out, “Basically every gene and every new protein fold, there is nothing of significance that we can show that can be had in that gradualistic way. It’s all a mirage. None of it happens that way.” Charles Darwin himself stated that “If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.” Yet as Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig pointed out, “in thousands of plant species often entirely new organs have been formed for the exclusive good of more than 132,930 other species, these ‘ugly facts’ have annihilated Darwin’s theory as well as modern versions of it.” Charles Darwin himself stated that, ““The impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God. Yet ‘our conscious selves’ are certainly not explainable by ‘chance’ (nor is consciousness explainable by any possible reductive materialistic explanation in general), i.e. ‘the hard problem of consciousness’. Besides the mathematics of probability consistently showing that Darwinian evolution is impossible, the mathematics of population genetics itself has now shown Darwinian evolution to be impossible. Moreover, ‘immaterial’ mathematics itself, which undergirds all of science, engineering and technology, is held by most mathematicians to exist in some timeless, unchanging, immaterial, Platonic realm. Yet, the reductive materialism that Darwinian theory is based upon denies the existence of the immaterial realm that mathematics exists in. i.e. Darwinian evolution actually denies the objective reality of the one thing, i.e. mathematics, that it most needs in order to be considered scientific in the first place! Donald Hoffman has, via population genetics, shown that if Darwin’s materialistic theory were true then all our observations of reality would be illusory. Yet the scientific method itself is based on reliable observation. Moreover, Quantum Mechanics itself has now shown that conscious observation must come before material reality, i.e. falsification of ‘realism’ proves that our conscious observations are reliable!. The reductive materialism that undergirds Darwinian thought holds that immaterial information is merely ’emergent’ from a material basis. Yet immaterial Information, via experimental realization of the “Maxwell’s Demon” thought experiment, is now found to be its own distinctive physical entity that, although it can interact in a ‘top down’ manner with matter and energy, is separate from matter and energy. Darwinists hold that Darwin’s theory is true. Yet ‘Truth’ itself is an abstract property of an immaterial mind that is irreducible to the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution. i.e. Assuming reductive materialism and/or Naturalism as the starting philosophical position of science actually precludes ‘the truth’ from ever being reached by science! Darwinists, due to their underlying naturalistic philosophy, insist that teleology (i.e. goal directed purpose) does not exist. Yet it is impossible for Biologists to do biological research without constantly invoking words that directly imply teleology. i.e. The very words that Biologists themselves use when they are doing their research falsifies Darwinian evolution.
Verse:
1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast what is good.
bornagain77_{January 19, 2020
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Bornagain77 @ 8
Darwinian materialists simply have no clue how anything material could ever possibly generate consciousness (and therefore no clue how anything material could ever generate ‘personhood’)
No, we don't have a coherent, detailed explanation of how conscious experience emerges from the physical activities of the brain. But neither do you. Nobody does, yet. But what materialist science has done is begin to reveal in increasing detail at least some of what the physical brain does. This points towards a materialist basis for consciousness> Christian theism has nothing to offer as an alternative in that respect.
You claimed Dr. Egnor was”promoting his anti-evolution agenda here, not science.” FYI, Darwinism is NOT a science but is a religion!
I think anyone who has read a fair amount of what Egnor has written would come to the same conclusion as I have and I'm not sure Egnor would deny it.Seversky_{January 19, 2020
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Bornagain77 @ 3
And as the following article states, the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.
Yes, it probably would. But biology does not assume a human infant suddenly materializes fully-formed as if it had just emerged from a Star Trek transporter. It is a stage along a decades-long developmental process that began with a fertilized egg cell. If you provide the right environment, including the necessary physical resources, that cell will grow into an adult human being. If you want to describe, say, the water and nutrients that are required for that development as "information", you can but it is not what I think of as information.Seversky_{January 19, 2020
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Seversky, contrary to what you want to believe, it is completely inexplicable to atheistic materialism. Shoot consciousness itself is completely inexplicable to atheistic materialism. But alas, empirical evidence never troubled your blind faith in atheistic materialism before so I see no reason why you should let it trouble your blind faith in atheistic materialism now.bornagain77_{January 19, 2020
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Bornagain77 @ 2
The fact that ‘the whole’ can never be reduced to ‘the parts’, as is assumed within the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution, plays out with Gödel’s incompleteness theorem as well it plays out with quantum mechanics:
Evolution assumes that living things are contingent, influenced by the environment beyond themselves, so there is no conflict with Gödel's theorem.
Fortunately, due to advances in science, specifically due to advances in quantum biology and in quantum information theory, we are not in the dark as to answering this question. We now know that an immense amount of ‘positional information’ and/or ‘quantum information’ is coming into the developing embryo ‘from the outside’ by some ‘non-material’ method.
Is it? The amount of information needed to describe an acorn is far smaller than that needed to describe an oak tree, just as the information needed to describe, say, a blastocyst is far smaller than that needed to describe an adult human being. Where does all that information come from? What is "information" in that context?Seversky_{January 19, 2020
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Bornagain77 @ 1
If a person were merely the brain, as reductive materialists hold, then if half of a brain were removed then a ‘person’ should only be ‘half the person’, or at least somewhat less of a ‘person’, as they were before.
This is similar to the sophomoric challenge of "what good is half an eye?" It depends on a simplistic concept both of personality and brain. Suppose we think of the brain's hemispheres as more-or-less complete brains in themselves, cross-linked through the three bundles of nerve fibers through which they exchange information. What we call personality can be envisaged as the sum of all the neurological activity which is spread throughout both hemispheres. Isolating both hemispheres or even removing one completely can result in temporary or even permanent deficits but it is clearly a gross oversimplification to imagine one half of the personality stored in one hemisphere and the other half being stored on the other side. As has been pointed out, one hemisphere appears to be capable of acting as a fully-functional brain. None of this supports Cartesian dualism, though.
As should be needless to say, the preceding evidence from hemispherectomies is completely inexplicable for reductive materialists, whereas for Christian Theists who believe in an immaterial mind and in an immaterial soul, these findings, while surprising, are none-the-less, to be expected since we believe that the immaterial soul and immaterial mind live past the death of our material bodies.
As I suggested above, the evidence from hemispherectomies is not completely inexplicable from a materialist perspective, whereas the concept of an immaterial mind or soul presents a challenge to Christian theism, namely that, if those two entities can survive and function completely independent of a physical body, why bother with that body at all, let alone one that has to sustain a hugely complex and metabolically expensive brain?Seversky_{January 19, 2020
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No one, not Egnor, not anyone here is arguing that there are effects to brain damage, Alzheimer’s, and split brain. Nor is Egnor being misleadingly. He is arguing to the fact that coyne is wrong, and split brained people don’t become two in one when you do the surgery I can cut all the cords to a violin or piano and it will affect whether or not it makes music but you still need a person a mind to use it You might not appreciate that analogy but it also satisfies cause and effect as well Egnor’s position is that we are one mind and body fused, a single being It is the same mind and the same personality only now it’s affected by brain damage of some sort He actually argues against Cartesian dualismAaronS1978_{January 18, 2020
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Seversky, you, as usual, are missing the forest for the trees. But anyways, research has now shown the unified attention of a person despite split hemispheres. As well, it is now found that visual and motion information is shared between the two hemispheres despite the hemispheres being split
The Case for the Soul: Refuting Physicalist Objections - video - at 12:00 minute mark there is a detailed look at the split brain objections of materialists https://youtu.be/GB5TNrtu9Pk?t=724
So again, as Dr. Egnor stated, “Split-brain surgery doesn’t split the mind. People after split brain surgery remain one person, with one consciousness, one intellect, and one will.” As to your claim that "anyone who doubts the physical basis of personality has only to look at the tragic cases of Alzheimer’s Disease". No one argues that detrimental changes to the brain will not negatively effect one's personality. Just like no one argues drinking too much alcohol will not negatively effect one's personality. It is a 'DUH" fact for crying out loud. What is being hotly contested is the evidence free claim from materialists that consciousness, (and therefore 'personhood'), is a product of the material brain. i.e. the 'hard problem' of consciousness. Darwinian materialists simply have no clue how anything material could ever possibly generate consciousness (and therefore no clue how anything material could ever generate 'personhood'):
"Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness." - Jerry Fodor - Rutgers University philosopher [2] Fodor, J. A., Can there be a science of mind? Times Literary Supplement. July 3, 1992, pp5-7. “Every day we recall the past, perceive the present and imagine the future. How do our brains accomplish these feats? It’s safe to say that nobody really knows.” Sebastian Seung - Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist - “Connectome”: "Those centermost processes of the brain with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension at present that no one I know of has been able even to imagine their nature." Roger Wolcott Sperry - Nobel neurophysiologist As quoted in Genius Talk : Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries (1995) by Denis Brian "We have at present not even the vaguest idea how to connect the physio-chemical processes with the state of mind." - Eugene Wigner - Nobel prize-winner – Quantum Symmetries "Science's biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head, rather than the foot." - Nick Herbert - Contemporary physicist "No experiment has ever demonstrated the genesis of consciousness from matter. One might as well believe that rabbits emerge from magicians' hats. Yet this vaporous possibility, this neuro-mythology, has enchanted generations of gullible scientists, in spite of the fact that there is not a shred of direct evidence to support it." - Larry Dossey - Physician and author
Thus for you to pretend that there is a "wealth of evidence" that consciousness, and therefore 'personhood', is merely a product of the material brain is for you to completely overlook the elephant in the living room. Namely, you have no real clue how consciousness from a material brain is even possible in the first place! Moreover, there is also another particularly large fly in your ointment for your claim that Alzheimer’s patients prove that personality is entirely dependent on the material brain.
When Alzheimer's Victims Suddenly 'Perk Up' Just Before Death -- What's Going On? - 09/29/2014 Conventional brain science has no explanation. It has long assumed that as the brain goes, so goes the mind; for the brain is what gives rise to the mind. The return of mental clarity and memory in a brain ravaged by Alzheimer's is not supposed to happen. Yet it does in some cases. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-miracle-of-terminal-l_b_5863492? One Last Goodbye: The Strange Case of Terminal Lucidity I'm as sworn to radical rationalism as the next neo-Darwinian materialist. That said, over the years I've had to "quarantine," for lack of a better word, a few anomalous personal experiences that have stubbornly defied my own logical understanding of them. By Jesse Bering on November 25, 2014 Excerpt: When my mother died in early 2000, we had a final farewell that some researchers might consider paranormal. At the time, it did strike me as remarkable—and after all these years, I still can’t talk about it without getting emotional. The night before she died at the age of 54 (after a long battle with ovarian cancer), I was sleeping in my mother’s bedroom alongside her. The truth was that I’d already grieved her loss a few days earlier, from the moment she lapsed into what the Hospice nurses had assured us was an irretrievable coma. So at this point, waiting for her body to expire as a physical machine wasn’t as difficult as the loss of “her” beforehand, which is when I’d completely broken down. It had all happened so quickly and, I suppose being young and in denial about how imminent her death really was, I hadn’t actually gotten around to telling her how very grateful I was to have had her as my mom and how much I loved her. But then, around 3am, I awoke to find her reaching her hand out to me, and she seemed very much aware. She was too weak to talk but her eyes communicated all. We spent about five minutes holding hands: me sobbing, kissing her cheeks, telling her everything I’d meant to say before but hadn't. Soon she closed her eyes again, this time for good. She died the next day. I didn’t quite see the experience as “supernatural” when it happened. And I'm not sure I do today either. But I also didn’t have a name for the experience then. In fact, one didn’t even exist. It does now: terminal lucidity.,,, Let’s have a more detailed look at the phenomenon in question. The term was coined only five years ago by German biologist Michael Nahm. His 2009 article in The Journal of Near-Death Studies was the first modern review article on the curious subject of cognitively impaired people becoming clearheaded as their death approaches. According to him, cases of “terminal lucidity” had been recorded for millennia, from accounts by classical scholars such as Hippocrates, Cicero and Plutarch to 19th-century medical luminaries like Benjamin Rush (who wrote the first American treatise on mental illness). It’s just that, apparently, no one had thought to label or conceptualize these elusive incidents in any formal way before. Here’s how Nahm defined terminal lucidity in that original article: "The (re-)emergence of normal or unusually enhanced mental abilities in dull, unconscious, or mentally ill patients shortly before death, including considerable elevation of mood and spiritual affectation, or the ability to speak in a previously unusual spiritualized and elated manner." The author characterizes terminal lucidity as one of the more common, but lesser known, ELEs (or “end-of-life experiences”). Others on his list include deathbed visions, apparitions, near-death/out-of-body experiences, telepathic impressions, and so on. But terminal lucidity is a vague concept, needless to say. First of all, what exactly should qualify as the time period “shortly before death”: minutes, hours, days … months? In a follow-up article by Nahm appearing that same year in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, and coauthored with the psychiatrist Bruce Greyson of the University of Virginia, we get some clarification on this. Of 49 case studies of terminal lucidity, the vast majority (84 percent) occurred within a week of death; 43 percent, in fact, transpired the final day of life. They divide the phenomenon into two general classes, however. In the first subtype, “the severity of mental derangement improve[s] slowly in conjunction with the decline of bodily vitality.” This occurs in some patients with chronic mental illness when their psychiatric symptoms become less pronounced, or disappear altogether, starting around a month before their deaths. Thus, the lucid periods emerge gradually, like clouds parting. The authors offer three Russian case studies from the 1970s as examples, all schizophrenic patients “without prior lucid intervals, living in seemingly stable psychotic mental states for many years.” One man who’d been completely catatonic for nearly two decades allegedly “became almost normal” before he finally passed away. In the second subtype of terminal lucidity, the authors tell us, “full mental clarity can appear quite abruptly and unexpectedly just hours or days before death.” In one study, 70 percent of caretakers in a British nursing home said they’d personally observed people with dementia becoming lucid shortly before their deaths. (That figure sounded far more impressive to me before I realized there were only 10 respondents.) A 92-year-old woman with advanced Alzheimer’s disease, for instance, hadn’t recognized her family for years, but the day before her death, she had a pleasantly bright conversation with them, recalling everyone’s name. She was even aware of her own age and where she’d been living all this time. “Such incidents happen regularly,” write Nahm and Greyson. In another example of this second, more abrupt subtype, earlier this year the authors detailed the extraordinary case of a young German woman named Anna (“Käthe”) Katharina Ehmer, who died in 1922. Her case is especially valuable, according to them, because it was witnessed by two highly respected and influential local figures: Wilhem Wittneben, the chief physician at what was then one of the largest insane asylums in Germany (Hephata), and Friedrich Happich, the director of that same institution. Over the years, both Wittneben and Happich relayed the experience many times in speeches and writings, and their independent descriptions of the incident cross-verified each other. Käthe was among the most profoundly disabled of the patients at the asylum. Happich paints a vivid picture of her mental status. “From birth on,” he writes, “she was seriously retarded. She had never learned to speak a single word. She stared for hours on a particular spot, then fidgeted for hours without a break. She gorged her food, fouled herself day and night, uttered an animal-like sound, and slept … never [taking] notice of her environment even for a second.” As if that weren’t enough, Käthe suffered several severe meningitis infections over the years that had damaged her cortical brain tissue. Yet, despite all this, as the woman lay dying (shortly after having her leg amputated from osseous tuberculosis—talk about bad luck), Wittneben, Happich, and other staff members at the facility gathered in astonishment at her bedside. “Käthe,” wrote Happich, “who had never spoken a single word, being entirely mentally disabled from birth on, sang dying songs to herself. Specifically, she sang over and over again, ‘Where does the soul find its home, its peace? Peace, peace, heavenly peace!’” For half an hour she sang. Her face, up to then so stultified, was transfigured and spiritualized. Then, she quietly passed away.” The religious undertones make my eyebrows rise in spontaneous cynicism, but at face value, one has to admit that the story of Käthe Ehmer is something of a puzzle. And in their extensive literature review on the subject—not an easy task, given that “terminal lucidity” couldn’t be used as a search term prior to that first 2009 article—Nahm and Greyson found a total of 81 references to similar cases, reported by 51 different authors. Nineteenth century physicians and psychiatrists, they point out, wrote most of these accounts. By the 20th century, they speculate, doctors simply stopped reporting these incidents altogether because they failed to jive with contemporary scientific materialism. Yet, even if terminal lucidity is a genuine phenomenon, who’s to say there isn’t a logical scientific explanation, one involving some unknown brain physiology? Nahm and Greyson don’t discount this possibility entirely, but for cases involving obvious brain damage (such as strokes, tumors, advanced Alzheimer’s disease) that should render the patient all but vegetative, not functioning normally, it’s a genuine medical mystery. According to the authors, terminal lucidity also isn’t all just in the perceiver’s head. Rather, they write, “it seems to be more common than usually assumed, and reflects more than just a collection of anecdotes that on closer scrutiny emerge as wishful thinking.” This then, to them, leaves open the possibility of something more spiritually significant, with the “transcendantal subject” (i.e., the soul) loosening itself from the physical substrate of the brain as death approaches and being able to enter “usually hidden realms.” I remain a skeptic. Still, I really don’t know how my mother managed those five minutes of perfect communion with me when, ostensibly, all of her cognitive functions were already lost. Was it her immortal soul? One last firestorm in her dying brain? Honestly, I’m just glad it happened. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/one-last-goodbye-the-strange-case-of-terminal-lucidity/
You claimed Dr. Egnor was"promoting his anti-evolution agenda here, not science." FYI, Darwinism is NOT a science but is a religion!bornagain77_{January 18, 2020
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I doubt that there are many simple enough to expect the personality of a split-brain patient to be split down the middle as well - whatever that might mean. But Egnor is misleading - either deliberately or through ignorance - if he is suggesting that there are no consequences. You yourself quoted the following:
Of course, the operation has its downside: “You can walk, run—some dance or skip—but you lose use of the hand opposite of the hemisphere that was removed. You have little function in that arm and vision on that side is lost,” Freeman says. Remarkably, few other impacts are seen. ,,,
I don't think of loss of vision on one side or loss of hand use as inconsequential. Nor are they the only effects:
Split-brain surgery, or corpus calloscotomy, is a drastic way of alleviating epileptic seizures, the occurrence of sporadic electrical storms in the brain. The procedure involves severing the corpus callosum, the main bond between the brain’s left and right hemispheres. After a split-brain surgery, the two hemispheres do not exchange information as efficiently as before. This impairment can result in split-brain syndrome, a condition where the separation of the hemispheres affects behavior and agency. Michael Gazzaniga and Roger W. Sperry, the first to study split brains in humans, found that several patients who had undergone a complete calloscotomy suffered from split-brain syndrome. In patients with split-brain syndrome, the right hemisphere, which controls the left hand and foot, acts independently of the left hemisphere and the person’s ability to make rational decisions. This can give rise to a kind of split personality, in which the left hemisphere give orders that reflect the person’s rational goals, whereas the right hemisphere issues conflicting demands that reveal hidden desires. Gazzaniga and Sperry's split-brain research is now legendary. One of their child participants, Paul S., had a fully functional language center in both hemispheres. This allowed the researchers to question each side of the brain. When they asked the right side what their patient wanted to be when he grew up, he replied, "an automobile racer." When they posed the same question to the left, however, he responded, "a draftsman." Another patient pulled down his pants with the left hand and back up with the right in a continuing struggle. On a different occasion, this same patient's left hand made an attempt to strike the unsuspecting wife as the right hand grabbed the villainous limp to stop it. Split personality is a rare consequence of a split brain. In some cases, impaired interhemispheric communication leaves personality intact but still allows people to use the two hemispheres to complete independent intellectual tasks. An MRI scan of the savant Kim Peek, who inspired the fictional character Raymond Babbitt (played by Dustin Hoffman) in the movie Rain Man, revealed an absence of the corpus callosum, the anterior commissure and the hippocampal commissure, the three cables for information transfer between hemispheres. As a consequence of this complete split, Peek, who sadly died last year, was able to simultaneously read both pages of an open book and retain the information. He apparently had developed language areas in both hemispheres. Peek was a living encyclopedia. He spent every day with his dad in the library absorbing information. Among his most impressive feats was his ability to provide traveling directions between any two cities in the world.
And anyone who doubts the physical basis of personality has only to look at the tragic cases of Alzheimer's Disease in which the family and friends of a victim have to watch their personality gradually unravel before their eyes to the point where they are no longer recognized. Alzheimer's, as I'm sure we all know, is associated with pphysical changes in the brain
Alzheimer’s disease is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and, eventually, the ability to carry out the simplest tasks. In most people with the disease—those with the late-onset type—symptoms first appear in their mid-60s. Early-onset Alzheimer’s occurs between a person’s 30s and mid-60s and is very rare. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia among older adults.Older woman with Alzheimer's looking out of a window The disease is named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer. In 1906, Dr. Alzheimer noticed changes in the brain tissue of a woman who had died of an unusual mental illness. Her symptoms included memory loss, language problems, and unpredictable behavior. After she died, he examined her brain and found many abnormal clumps (now called amyloid plaques) and tangled bundles of fibers (now called neurofibrillary, or tau, tangles). These plaques and tangles in the brain are still considered some of the main features of Alzheimer’s disease. Another feature is the loss of connections between nerve cells (neurons) in the brain. Neurons transmit messages between different parts of the brain, and from the brain to muscles and organs in the body. Many other complex brain changes are thought to play a role in Alzheimer’s, too. This damage initially appears to take place in the hippocampus, the part of the brain essential in forming memories. As neurons die, additional parts of the brain are affected. By the final stage of Alzheimer’s, damage is widespread, and brain tissue has shrunk significantly.
Nor are the effects purely physical
Managing Personality and Behavior Changes in Alzheimer's Alzheimer’s disease causes brain cells to die, so the brain works less well over time. This changes how a person acts. This article has suggestions that may help you understand and cope with changes in personality and behavior in a person with Alzheimer’s disease. Common Changes in Personality and Behavior Common personality and behavior changes you may see include: Getting upset, worried, and angry more easily Acting depressed or not interested in things Hiding things or believing other people are hiding things Imagining things that aren’t there Wandering away from home Pacing a lot Showing unusual sexual behavior Hitting you or other people Misunderstanding what he or she sees or hears You also may notice that the person stops caring about how he or she looks, stops bathing, and wants to wear the same clothes every day.
There is a wealth of evidence which shows that personality - however that might defined - is correlated with the physical brain. Egnor is promoting his anti-evolution agenda here, not science.Seversky_{January 18, 2020
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Seversky, those effects were not something that Dr. Egnor neglected to mention. His main point was that, in spite of those effects, "Split-brain surgery doesn’t split the mind. People after split brain surgery remain one person, with one consciousness, one intellect, and one will."
“Let me repeat: Split-brain surgery doesn’t split the mind. People after split brain surgery remain one person, with one consciousness, one intellect, and one will. They have perceptual disabilities caused by the surgery but those disabilities are subtle and not noticed in everyday life. Their abstract intellect remains unified and the will that follows on that intellect remains unified. Split-brain surgery doesn’t split logic or mathematics or abstract reasoning or moral decisions based on abstract reasoning. The results of split-brain surgery are strong arguments for dualism and for the immateriality of the intellect and will. It is a sad fact that an evolutionary biologist like Coyne, together with many neuroscientists, fails to understand the most important implication of this research—that the higher faculties of the mind cannot be split even by splitting the brain in half.”
That is what remains completely inexplicable for Darwinian materialists such as yourself.bornagain77_{January 18, 2020
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What is most remarkable about these patients—what spurred Roger Sperry to do his landmark Nobel Prize-winning research—is that after the surgery they are unaffected in everyday life, except for the diminished seizures. They are one person after the surgery, as they were before. They are basically the same, even after their brain has been functionally cut in half. They feel the same, act the same, and think the same, for all intents and purposes.

What are the risks of a corpus callosotomy? Serious problems are uncommon with a corpus callosotomy, but there are risks, including: Risks associated with surgery, including infection, bleeding, and allergic reaction to anesthesia Swelling in the brain Lack of awareness of one side of the body Loss of coordination Problems with speech, such as stuttering Increase in partial seizures (occurring on one side of the brain) Stroke And they are not the only effects Symptoms Of Split-Brain Syndrome Many patients with split-brain syndrome retain intact memory and social skills. Split-brain patients also maintain motor skills that were learned before the onset of their condition and require both sides of the body; examples include walking, swimming, and biking. They can also learn new tasks that involve either parallel or mirrored movements of their fingers or hands. They cannot, however, learn to perform new tasks that require interdependent movement of each hand, such as learning to play the piano, where both hands must work together to produce the desired music. Eye movements also remain coordinated. Since information cannot be directly shared between the two hemispheres, split-brain patients display unusual behaviours, particularly concerning speech and object recognition. For instance, when blindfolded a split-brain patient may not be able to name a familiar object that is held in the left hand, because information for the sense of touch is relayed from the left side of the body to the right hemisphere, which typically has a weak language centre. Without an intact corpus callosum, a person cannot access verbal information in the left hemisphere as long as the object remains in the left hand. For the same reason, the patient may have difficulty using the left hand to execute verbal commands; the inability to respond to commands with motor activity is a form of apraxia. To compensate for deficiencies in touch recognition by the left hand and left-hand apraxia, the patient (still blindfolded) may hold the object in the right hand, which relays information to the left hemisphere, providing access to the patient’s dominant verbal bank and enabling him to speak the name of the object. Upon hearing the name of a given object, the patient may also use the left hand to retrieve it; this presumably is because auditory information is processed by both hemispheres. The diffuse nature by which sounds and smells are processed across the brain appears to underlie other problems experienced by split-brain patients. For example, patients are unable to name odours presented to the right nostril, though the left hand can point out the source. Some symptoms of chronic disconnection can improve with time.
Seversky_{January 18, 2020
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Well, according to j. coyne, he is an 'illusion'. An 'illusion' that according to rosenberg, changes 'every morning' (very lawful illusions indeed). 365 days/year=365 'different' j. coynes/year...? And positing a soul is weird. Materialism has killed itself. It is an oppresive, ridiculous and self-defeating philosophy.Truthfreedom_{January 18, 2020
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And as the following article states, the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.
In a TED Talk, (the Question You May Not Ask,,, Where did the information come from?) – November 29, 2017 Excerpt: Sabatini is charming.,,, he deploys some memorable images. He points out that the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000. Later he wheels out the entire genome, in printed form, of a human being,,,,: [F]or the first time in history, this is the genome of a specific human, printed page-by-page, letter-by-letter: 262,000 pages of information, 450 kilograms.,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/in-a-ted-talk-heres-the-question-you-may-not-ask/
As to how thermodynamics itself relates to this immense amount of positional information that is somehow coming into the developing embryo from the outside by some non-material method, work done on bacteria can give us a small glimpse into just how far out of thermodynamic equilibrium multicellular organisms actually are. The information content that is found to be in a simple one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be around 10 to the 12 bits,,,
Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: - Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz' deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures. http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~angel/tsb/molecular.htm
,,, Which is the equivalent of about 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. 'In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”
“a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong - The Creation-evolution Controversy 'The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica." Carl Sagan, "Life" in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894
Thus since Bacterial cells are about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells.
Size Comparisons of Bacteria, Amoeba, Animal & Plant Cells Excerpt: Bacterial cells are very small - about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells. https://education.seattlepi.com/size-comparisons-bacteria-amoeba-animal-plant-cells-4966.html
And since there are conservatively estimated to be around 30 trillion cells within the average human body,
Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body - 2016 Abstract: Reported values in the literature on the number of cells in the body differ by orders of magnitude and are very seldom supported by any measurements or calculations. Here, we integrate the most up-to-date information on the number of human and bacterial cells in the body. We estimate the total number of bacteria in the 70 kg "reference man" to be 3.8·10^13. For human cells, we identify the dominant role of the hematopoietic lineage to the total count (?90%) and revise past estimates to 3.0·10^13 human cells. Our analysis also updates the widely-cited 10:1 ratio, showing that the number of bacteria in the body is actually of the same order as the number of human cells, and their total mass is about 0.2 kg. https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002533
Then that gives us a rough ballpark estimate of around 300 trillion times 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Or about 300 trillion times the information content contained within the books of all the largest libraries in the world. Needless to say, that is a massive amount of positional information that is somehow coming into a developing embryo from the outside by some non-material method. On top of all that, as far as quantum information theory itself is concerned, this immense amount of positional information that is somehow coming into the developing embryo from the outside, by some non-material method, in order to bring the developing embryo to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium, and in order to achieve its final 'form', is found to be quote-unquote, “a property of an observer who describes a system.”
The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/
In other words, some ‘outside observer’ who, (due to the quantum non-locality of the quantum coherence and/or entanglement of biological molecules), must necessarily exist outside the space-time of the universe, is now required in order for us to give an adequate causal account so that we may coherently explain how it is even possible for this immense amount of positional information to somehow be coming into the developing embryo ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method. As should be needless to say, Darwinian materialists have no clue who this 'outside observer', who must necessarily be outside space-time itself, could possible be. Whereas, on the other hand, Christians have predicted such a 'beyond space and time' observer to be intimately involved in embryological development for thousands of years,
Psalm 139: 13-16 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
Supplemental notes:
Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate – video (how consciousness, quantum information theory, and molecular biology correlate – 27 minute mark) https://youtu.be/4f0hL3Nrdas?t=1634 January 2020 - In other words, Intelligent Design, and a direct inference to God as the Intelligence behind life, (via the non-locality of quantum information and/or the non-locality of quantum entanglement ), has, for all intents and purposes, finally achieved experimental confirmation. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/karsten-pultz-why-random-processes-cannot-produce-information-a-new-argument/#comment-690519
bornagain77_{January 18, 2020
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The fact that 'the whole' can never be reduced to 'the parts', as is assumed within the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution, plays out with Gödel's incompleteness theorem as well it plays out with quantum mechanics: Gödel's incompleteness theorem can be stated succinctly as such: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove.”
"Gödel's incompleteness theorem (1931), proves that there are limits to what can be ascertained by mathematics. Kurt Gödel halted the achievement of a unifying all-encompassing theory of everything in his theorem that: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove.” - Stephen Hawking & Leonard Miodinow, The Grand Design (2010)
In fact Gödel stated, "For something to be a whole, it has to have an additional object, say, a soul or a mind."
“In materialism all elements behave the same. It is mysterious to think of them as spread out and automatically united. For something to be a whole, it has to have an additional object, say, a soul or a mind." - Kurt Gödel – Hao Wang’s supplemental biography of Gödel, A Logical Journey, MIT Press, 1996. [9.4.12]
Gödel's incompleteness theorem is not just some abstract mathematical proof but has now been extended to physics. In the following article entitled 'Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics', which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description."
Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics - December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, "We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s," added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. "So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description." http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html
And indeed this 'insurmountable difficulty' plays out in biology. We find that Darwinian mechanisms are simply at a complete loss to explain how the basic 'form' of any particular organism may take is achieved. For instance, contrary to what Darwinists presupposed, DNA is not a 'blueprint' for an organism,
DNA is life's blueprint? No, there's far more to it than that - 10 June 2015 https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22630251-000-dna-is-lifes-blueprint-no-theres-far-more-to-it-than-that/ DNA Is Not a Blueprint: How Genes Really Work - Aug 08, 2012 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dna-is-not-a-blueprint-ho_b_1578336
Indeed, DNA does not even control its own shape, much less does it control the final shape of a organism,
Tissue-specific spatial organization of genomes - June 21, 2004 Results ,,, Our results demonstrate that the spatial organization of genomes is tissue-specific and point to a role for tissue-specific spatial genome organization in the formation of recurrent chromosome arrangements among tissues. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC463291/
As Dr. Jonathan Wells states, “I now know as an embryologist,,,Tissues and cells, as they differentiate, modify their DNA to suit their needs. It's the organism controlling the DNA, not the DNA controlling the organism.”
Ask an Embryologist: Genomic Mosaicism - Jonathan Wells - February 23, 2015 Excerpt: humans have a "few thousand" different cell types. Here is my simple question: Does the DNA sequence in one cell type differ from the sequence in another cell type in the same person?,,, The simple answer is: We now know that there is considerable variation in DNA sequences among tissues, and even among cells in the same tissue. It's called genomic mosaicism. In the early days of developmental genetics, some people thought that parts of the embryo became different from each other because they acquired different pieces of the DNA from the fertilized egg. That theory was abandoned,,, ,,,(then) "genomic equivalence" -- the idea that all the cells of an organism (with a few exceptions, such as cells of the immune system) contain the same DNA -- became the accepted view. I taught genomic equivalence for many years. A few years ago, however, everything changed. With the development of more sophisticated techniques and the sampling of more tissues and cells, it became clear that genetic mosaicism is common. I now know as an embryologist,,,Tissues and cells, as they differentiate, modify their DNA to suit their needs. It's the organism controlling the DNA, not the DNA controlling the organism. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/02/ask_an_embryolo093851.html
Nor is the basic form of any organism reducible to any of the other material particulars in biology that Darwinists may wish to invoke,
Darwinism (Materialism) vs Biological Form - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w
As the following article states "Thom concluded in his book Structural Stability and Morphogenesis that the process of development should be thought of as being controlled by an “algebraic structure outside space-time itself” (p. 119). Likewise, Robert Rosen argued that life can only be understood as a mathematical abstraction consisting of functional relationships, irreducible to mechanistic processes."
Intelligent Design and the Advancement of Science - Brian Miller - December 11, 2017 Excerpt: DNA was expected to be the primary source of causality behind the operation and development of life. Such beliefs have previously raised concerns from leading scientists and mathematicians. For instance, physicist Walter Elsasser argued that the unfathomable complexity of the chemical and physically processes in life was “transcomputational” — beyond the realm of any theoretical means of computation. Moreover, the development of the embryo is not solely directed by DNA. Instead, it requires new “biotonic” principles. As a result, life cannot be reduced to chemistry and physics. An unbridgeable gap separates life from non-life. Similarly, mathematician René Thom argued that the 3D patterns of tissues in an organism’s development from egg to birth and their continuous transformation cannot be understood in terms of isolating the individual proteins generated by DNA and other molecules produced in cells. The problem is that the individual “parts” composing tissues and organs only take on the right form and function in the environment of those tissues and organs. More recent work by Denis Noble further has elucidated how every level of the biological hierarchy affects every other level, from DNA to tissues to the entire organism. Based partly on these insights, Thom concluded in his book Structural Stability and Morphogenesis that the process of development should be thought of as being controlled by an “algebraic structure outside space-time itself” (p. 119). Likewise, Robert Rosen argued that life can only be understood as a mathematical abstraction consisting of functional relationships, irreducible to mechanistic processes. He observed that life is fundamentally different from simple physics and chemistry. It embodies the Aristotelian category of final causation, which is closely related to the idea of purpose. The conclusions of these scholars challenge materialistic philosophy at its core. https://evolutionnews.org/2017/12/intelligent-design-and-the-advancement-of-science/
Thus we are stuck with the question of, 'Since the ultimate and final biological form that any organism may take is not reducible to any of the material particulars of that organism, just how does an organism achieve its final shape during embryological development?" Fortunately, due to advances in science, specifically due to advances in quantum biology and in quantum information theory, we are not in the dark as to answering this question. We now know that an immense amount of 'positional information' and/or 'quantum information' is coming into the developing embryo 'from the outside' by some 'non-material' method. At about the 41:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Wells, using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, information must somehow be added to the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method.
Design Beyond DNA: A Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Wells – video (41:00 minute mark) – January 2017 https://youtu.be/ASAaANVBoiE?t=2484
As mentioned previously, the amount of ‘positional information’ that is somehow coming into a developing embryo from the outside by some non-material method is immense. Vastly outstripping, by many orders of magnitude, the amount of sequential information that is contained within DNA itself. As Doug Axe states in the following video, “there are a quadrillion neural connections in the human brain, that’s vastly more neural connections in the human brain than there are bits (of information) in the human genome. So,,, there’s got to be something else going on that makes us what we are.”
“There is also a presumption, typically when we talk about our genome, (that the genome) is a blueprint for making us. And that is actually not a proven fact in biology. That is an assumption. And (one) that I question because I don’t think that 4 billion bases, which would be 8 billion bits of information, that you would actually have enough information to specify a human being. If you consider for example that there are a quadrillion neural connections in the human brain, that’s vastly more neural connections in the human brain than there are bits (of information) in the human genome. So,,, there’s got to be something else going on that makes us what we are.” Doug Axe – Intelligent Design 3.0 – Stephen C. Meyer – video (1 hour 16 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvwBaD8-00w&t=4575s
bornagain77_{January 18, 2020
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As to this comment from Dr. Egnor in his article,
"Let me repeat: Split-brain surgery doesn’t split the mind. People after split brain surgery remain one person, with one consciousness, one intellect, and one will. They have perceptual disabilities caused by the surgery but those disabilities are subtle and not noticed in everyday life. Their abstract intellect remains unified and the will that follows on that intellect remains unified. Split-brain surgery doesn’t split logic or mathematics or abstract reasoning or moral decisions based on abstract reasoning. The results of split-brain surgery are strong arguments for dualism and for the immateriality of the intellect and will. It is a sad fact that an evolutionary biologist like Coyne, together with many neuroscientists, fails to understand the most important implication of this research—that the higher faculties of the mind cannot be split even by splitting the brain in half."
Hemispherectomies add further weight to this conclusion: If a person were merely the brain, as reductive materialists hold, then if half of a brain were removed then a ‘person’ should only be ‘half the person’, or at least somewhat less of a ‘person’, as they were before. But that is not the case, the ‘whole person’ stays intact even though the brain suffers severe impairment:
A MAP OF THE SOUL by Michael Egnor – June 29 2017 Excerpt: I’m a neuroscientist and professor of neurosurgery. The mind-brain question haunts me. Neurosurgeons alter the brain on a daily basis, and what we find doesn’t fit the prevailing view that the brain runs the mind as computer hardware runs software. I have scores of patients who are missing large areas of their brains, yet who have quite good minds. I have a patient born with two-thirds of her brain absent. She’s a normal junior high kid who loves to play soccer. Another patient, missing a similar amount of brain tissue, is an accomplished musician with a master’s degree in English. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/06/a-map-of-the-soul Removing Half of Brain Improves Young Epileptics’ Lives: – 1997 Excerpt: “We are awed by the apparent retention of memory and by the retention of the child’s personality and sense of humor,” Dr. Eileen P. G. Vining,, Dr. John Freeman, the director of the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Epilepsy Center, said he was dumbfounded at the ability of children to regain speech after losing the half of the brain that is supposedly central to language processing. ”It’s fascinating,” Dr. Freeman said. ”The classic lore is that you can’t change language after the age of 2 or 3.” But Dr. Freeman’s group has now removed diseased left hemispheres in more than 20 patients, including three 13-year-olds whose ability to speak transferred to the right side of the brain in much the way that Alex’s did.,,, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/19/science/removing-half-of-brain-improves-young-epileptics-lives.html In further comment from the neuro-surgeons in the John Hopkins study: “Despite removal of one hemisphere, the intellect of all but one of the children seems either unchanged or improved. Intellect was only affected in the one child who had remained in a coma, vigil-like state, attributable to peri-operative complications.” Strange but True: When Half a Brain Is Better than a Whole One – May 2007 Excerpt: Most Hopkins hemispherectomy patients are five to 10 years old. Neurosurgeons have performed the operation on children as young as three months old. Astonishingly, memory and personality develop normally. ,,, Another study found that children that underwent hemispherectomies often improved academically once their seizures stopped. “One was champion bowler of her class, one was chess champion of his state, and others are in college doing very nicely,” Freeman says. Of course, the operation has its downside: “You can walk, run—some dance or skip—but you lose use of the hand opposite of the hemisphere that was removed. You have little function in that arm and vision on that side is lost,” Freeman says. Remarkably, few other impacts are seen. ,,, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-when-half-brain-better-than-whole How Removing Half of Someone’s Brain Can Improve Their Life – Oct. 2015 Excerpt: Next spring, del Peral (who has only half a brain) will graduate from Curry College, where she has made the dean’s list every semester since freshman year. http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/70120/how-removing-half-someones-brain-can-improve-their-life Discrepancy Between Cerebral Structure and Cognitive Functioning: A Review – 2017 Excerpt: The aforementioned student of mathematics had a global IQ of 130 and a verbal IQ of 140 at the age of 25 (Lorber, 1983), but had “virtually no brain” (Lewin 1980, p. 1232).,,, This student belonged to the group of patients that Lorber classified as having “extreme hydrocephalus,” meaning that more than 90% of their cranium appeared to be filled with cerebrospinal fluid (Lorber, 1983).,,, Apart from the above-mentioned student of mathematics, he described a woman with an extreme degree of hydrocephalus showing “virtually no cerebral mantle” who had an IQ of 118, a girl aged 5 who had an IQ of 123 despite extreme hydrocephalus, a 7-year-old boy with gross hydrocephalus and an IQ of 128, another young adult with gross hydrocephalus and a verbal IQ of 144, and a nurse and an English teacher who both led normal lives despite gross hydrocephalus.,,, Another interesting case is that of a 44-year-old woman with very gross hydrocephalus described by Masdeu (2008) and Masdeu et al. (2009). She had a global IQ of 98, worked as an administrator for a government agency, and spoke seven languages.,,, ,,, , people who grew up with only one hemisphere developed all the neuronal foundations needed for ordinary cognitive and most motor skills. Even so, it seems additionally surprising that one hemisphere can accomplish this after the other has been removed or was isolated anatomically and functionally from the rest of the brain, as it is the case of surgical hemispherectomy.,,, It is astonishing that many patients can lead an ordinary life after this drastic procedure, having only minor motor disabilities that result from mild hemiplegia.,,, McFie (1961) was astonished that “not only does it (one hemishere) perform motor and sensory functions for both sides of the body, it performs the associative and intellectual functions normally allocated to two hemispheres” (p. 248).,,, ,,, most patients, even adults, do not seem to lose their long-term memory such as episodic (autobiographic) memories.,,, https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/12/Discrepancy-between-cerebral-structure-and-cognitive-functioning-JNMD.pdf
As should be needless to say, the preceding evidence from hemispherectomies is completely inexplicable for reductive materialists, whereas for Christian Theists who believe in an immaterial mind and in an immaterial soul, these findings, while surprising, are none-the-less, to be expected since we believe that the immaterial soul and immaterial mind live past the death of our material bodies.
Luke 23:43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
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