--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "PaliGap" <compost1uk@...> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@> wrote: > > > It doesn't contradict anything I've said about consciousness > > anyway. Placing of brain structures is well understood, it > > can be predicted what functions people will lose or have > > difficulty with after a damage to the brain. > > I'm not convinced by your bravado here. On the contrary, > it seems to me that our expectations have been confounded, > not confirmed.
Yours perhaps, I didn't have expectations. > > I am not a brain scientist (and I take it neither are you). > But here we have Scientific American: > > "Neurosurgeons have performed the operation on children > as young as three months old. Astonishingly, memory and > personality develop normally." > > Why do they say "astonishingly"? Ask them. I would expect that both halves of the brain share memory building and personality. And maybe as they are so young the personality traits that are usually covered by one side get shifted to the other before they've started to be used thus making them as developmentally strong they would have been without the operation. What happens in accident victims; if one bit of the brain is lost a period of crazy unpredictability occurs until the functions are shared out with other parts. But it doesn't do the job fully, in the case of the person I know it left them more prone to anger, mood swings and impulsiveness. And that was predicted by the surgeon who operated, in fact it's all anyone says when they see the x-rays. Or: > > "Remarkably, few other impacts are seen. If the left side > of the brain is taken out, "most people have problems with > their speech, but it used to be thought that if you took > that side out after age two, you'd never talk again, and > we've proven that untrue," Freeman says. "The younger a > person is when they undergo hemispherectomy, the less > disability you have in talking. Where on the right side > of the brain speech is transferred to and what it displaces > is something nobody has really worked out." > > Why do they say "Remarkably"? Why do you think this is so important to your argument? I've told you, cutting the brain in half crossways has a radically different effect than lengthways. It's just the way it's wired to begin with, opposite hemispheres control the opposite side of the body with functions copied. This isn't a mystery to anyone. And it doesn't have anything to do with consciousness. And how come I've known there are two speech centres in the brain for years. Where did I get that info from? Ah yes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. Now *there's* a book students of consciousness should read. Not that it's the whole story (or even true perhaps) but there are enough factoids about brain wiring and function to keep you busy for a month.
