If the connective tissue between your two brain hemispheres is severed, the two halves of your brain can’t talk to each other.
When this happens, a second personality emerges for the right hemisphere, which doesn’t have language but can roughly understand and answer things.
So for example, someone who was religious might have a right hemisphere that’s atheistic. Or doesn’t like the same things, etc.
One of the questions we might ponder is where this other personality comes from. Is it that in a sudden void of consciousness a new personality develops?
Or are we, with connected brain hemispheres, not actually a single persona at all, but more like the dogs in a trenchcoat looking like a whole person?
Is the ‘you’ reading this right now just the personality that’s been on top for all this time, while there’s other personas kept within you watching powerless and yearning for their turn in control? Each time you listen to your favorite song which maybe they have grown to hate, is a part of you screaming and you just can’t hear them?
My understanding is that each half of you becomes an independent system. Your right half controlled and perceived by the left brain. And that experiments that hid the left hand from the right, they could prompt both sides to draw something and you’d get two distinct responses.
I suppose you adapt, as you don’t have an alternative nor a frame of reference of what “normal” is?
Like people born without a limb, or those who discover they’re double-jointed or hyper-extensive/-flexible when their classmates react at their ability to touch their thumb to their wrist.
I tend to envisage my mindscape as an orchestra. My consciousness is a fictitious conductor. It doesn’t exist, but the lie that it does makes it easier to coordinate things between the instruments. In some manner, by acting on that lie, it is no longer a lie.
In this analogy, when the brain hemispheres are separated, then the orchestra is split in 2. Both develop a conductor, to try and remain functional. Neither conductor is the original me, but neither is not me, at the same time. It would be unpleasant for the variant left unable to communicate however.
I’ve actually experienced something that felt close to this before. A combination of sensory overload, and panic attack. My mind momentarily became completely discordant. As it sorted itself out, my consciousness reasserted itself in several different loci. In effect, my orchestra had 3 different conductors. It took almost a minute for them to stop pulling against each other and meld into 1 again. I have memories of all 3 sides in the ‘battle’.
99% of my mind is emotional or monkey logic. Getting it to accept logic is like trying to tame a bunch of cats. It works, so long as you can feed them enough dopamine. Fail, and they’ll want to eat your face.
I know a person who is about to have a corpus callusotomy procedure which is where the halves of the brain are divided surgically, in her case to stop seizures. She is globally delayed and I wonder now what she’ll be like afterwards.
I heard about this as well. I think maybe this is what is mistaken as subconscious. I think it’s the “dogs in a trench” coat situation. But there is actually some amount of deep communication. Maybe even just hormonal/ emotional.
Sometimes in life I’ll get a feeling that’s origin is not immediately apparent to me. After some focus I can trace its origins to the intersection of two competing desires or something. That I understand. But other times… Even with long sessions of meditation, it feels like the explanation for some feelings do not reside within my own consciousness.
I’ve begun to try and listen for other consciousness and understand them. I’ve gotten a sort of impression of a personality and when we’re both happy, I feel a sort of harmony. When they’re upset I feel a pull towards chaos. Doing something can be as simple as getting a drink they like or as complex as avoiding a certain social situation.
Or it’s all in my imagination, lol. If so I’ll enjoy the placebo.
theres a video somewhere of a dude like that where his halves would make shit up independently of eachother on the fly and he was unaware of it. really interesting stuff
Yeah, this is a phenomenon called ‘confabulation.’ You see it with stroke patients too. There’s some who feel like it’s a more accurate term than ‘hallucinations’ for when LLMs make shit up these days too.
If the connective tissue between your two brain hemispheres is severed, the two halves of your brain can’t talk to each other.
When this happens, a second personality emerges for the right hemisphere, which doesn’t have language but can roughly understand and answer things.
So for example, someone who was religious might have a right hemisphere that’s atheistic. Or doesn’t like the same things, etc.
One of the questions we might ponder is where this other personality comes from. Is it that in a sudden void of consciousness a new personality develops?
Or are we, with connected brain hemispheres, not actually a single persona at all, but more like the dogs in a trenchcoat looking like a whole person?
Is the ‘you’ reading this right now just the personality that’s been on top for all this time, while there’s other personas kept within you watching powerless and yearning for their turn in control? Each time you listen to your favorite song which maybe they have grown to hate, is a part of you screaming and you just can’t hear them?
I had a girlfriend who was born without this connective tissue between her brain hemispheres.
Other than being weird, for reasons that could be explained myriad other ways, she was able to control each eye independently when she wanted.
Watching her watch TV and me while I walked past was… odd.
My understanding is that each half of you becomes an independent system. Your right half controlled and perceived by the left brain. And that experiments that hid the left hand from the right, they could prompt both sides to draw something and you’d get two distinct responses.
Idk how that works for a normal life like that
I suppose you adapt, as you don’t have an alternative nor a frame of reference of what “normal” is?
Like people born without a limb, or those who discover they’re double-jointed or hyper-extensive/-flexible when their classmates react at their ability to touch their thumb to their wrist.
It’s definitely curious and worth understanding.
I tend to envisage my mindscape as an orchestra. My consciousness is a fictitious conductor. It doesn’t exist, but the lie that it does makes it easier to coordinate things between the instruments. In some manner, by acting on that lie, it is no longer a lie.
In this analogy, when the brain hemispheres are separated, then the orchestra is split in 2. Both develop a conductor, to try and remain functional. Neither conductor is the original me, but neither is not me, at the same time. It would be unpleasant for the variant left unable to communicate however.
I’ve actually experienced something that felt close to this before. A combination of sensory overload, and panic attack. My mind momentarily became completely discordant. As it sorted itself out, my consciousness reasserted itself in several different loci. In effect, my orchestra had 3 different conductors. It took almost a minute for them to stop pulling against each other and meld into 1 again. I have memories of all 3 sides in the ‘battle’.
I want to nominate this post for some kind of award, that was amazing. Thanks for sharing that!
Appreciated, though it’s most the musings of a random guy on the internet. If it helps you visualise and/or understand your own mind, all the better.
Yes sometimes I feel like I can rely on my quiet brain for logical reasoning
I can’t.
99% of my mind is emotional or monkey logic. Getting it to accept logic is like trying to tame a bunch of cats. It works, so long as you can feed them enough dopamine. Fail, and they’ll want to eat your face.
I think that’s the human condition. Don’t studies show that most decisions are made on emotion and rationalized afterwards?
I don’t find this creepy at all. All the “personalities” in my brain are just parts of me.
I know a person who is about to have a corpus callusotomy procedure which is where the halves of the brain are divided surgically, in her case to stop seizures. She is globally delayed and I wonder now what she’ll be like afterwards.
I heard about this as well. I think maybe this is what is mistaken as subconscious. I think it’s the “dogs in a trench” coat situation. But there is actually some amount of deep communication. Maybe even just hormonal/ emotional.
Sometimes in life I’ll get a feeling that’s origin is not immediately apparent to me. After some focus I can trace its origins to the intersection of two competing desires or something. That I understand. But other times… Even with long sessions of meditation, it feels like the explanation for some feelings do not reside within my own consciousness.
I’ve begun to try and listen for other consciousness and understand them. I’ve gotten a sort of impression of a personality and when we’re both happy, I feel a sort of harmony. When they’re upset I feel a pull towards chaos. Doing something can be as simple as getting a drink they like or as complex as avoiding a certain social situation.
Or it’s all in my imagination, lol. If so I’ll enjoy the placebo.
theres a video somewhere of a dude like that where his halves would make shit up independently of eachother on the fly and he was unaware of it. really interesting stuff
Yeah, this is a phenomenon called ‘confabulation.’ You see it with stroke patients too. There’s some who feel like it’s a more accurate term than ‘hallucinations’ for when LLMs make shit up these days too.