Hemispheric Specialization

  • Vocab:

    • Lateralization: Different parts of the brain doing different things, face processing on the right and language on the left. Left is detail oriented, right is more holistic and big-picture focused

    • Corpus callosum: Tons of myelinated axon fibers that carry things across the brain, humans have them fixed at birth (no pruning like in monkeys/cats)

      • Rostrum

      • Splenium

      • Genu

    • Commissure: Near the corpus callosum, allows emotional information to cross

    • Homotopic: Connects the same structures

    • Heterotopic: Connect different structures

    • Ipsilateral: Connect same hemispheres

    • Contralateral: Connect opposite hemispheres

    • Overshoot phenomenon, axon overproduction: When too many axons are made at birth, leads to pruning

    • Sylvian fissure: Longer on the left than the right, tends to process language

    • Optic chiasm: Where information from the retina changes sides so left brain has right information and right brain has left information

    • Theory of Mind: The ability to understand other people have thoughts/feelings/beliefs that are different from your own

  • People:

    • Myers Sperry: Found purpose of corpus callosum

  • Brain is split into hemispheres, most things are done across both but lateralization occurs with left doing language-related functions and right doing facial recognition. Even with these they are just MOSTLY, not all

  • Wooo optic stuff this is all in your perception notes but here we go again. Information of the left part of the visual field hits the right side of each eye’s retina, information of the right part of the visual field hits the left half of each eye’s retina. At the optic chiasm they cross so that the left brain has information from the right visual field, and right brain has information from the left of the visual field

  • Having two eyes allows for perseverance of vision should one be lost

  • Information from the right hemisphere cannot be communicated without use of the left hemisphere, if the corpus callosum is split they can’t do this and can’t describe what they see on the left half of the visual field

  • Left hemisphere is the interpreter, if told to do something they will come up with a story post-callosotomy, tries to make sense of the world