A couple years ago, I came across a bizarre and eye-opening story told by neuroscientist V.S Ramachandran.
Ramachandran was working with split-brain patients, who have surgically had the connection between their left and brain hemispheres cut to control seizures.
In an experiment, Ramachandran demonstrated that these patients effectively had two different minds inside one skull. One mind would like chocolate ice cream best, the other vanilla. One believed in God, the other didn’t.
This story was my first exposure to strange and wonderful world of split-brain research.
I had always thought all the “left-brained/right-brained” stuff was just bunk. I didn’t realize it’s based on pretty incontrovertible scientific proof, going back to research on these split-brain people.
I recently came across another split-brain story, this one in a book by neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga.
Gazzaniga did his PhD at Caltech under a guy named Roger Sperry, who went on to win the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine for this work.
Sperry and Gazzaniga were pioneers in working with split-brain patients. These patients seemed to be perfectly normal. But thanks to a bunch of clever experiments, Sperry and Gazzaniga managed to tease out some strange things happening in these patients, which reveal real mysteries of the mind.
For example, the scientists would simultaneously show two images to the patient in such a way that each image only went to one hemisphere.
The patient was then asked to point, with his two hands, to cards connected to the image he had just seen.
One time, a patient was shown a picture of a snow scene for the right brain… and a chicken claw for the left brain.
He then pointed to images of a shovel and a chicken (with the left hand being controlled by the right brain, and the right hand being controlled by the left brain — we’re cross-wired like that).
So far so good. The different sides of the brain had seen different images, and could identify those images by pointing with the hands they controlled.
But here’s where it gets really tricky and interesting:
Gazzaniga had the intuition to ask the patient to explain why he had selected the two images, the one of a chicken and the other of a shovel.
One last scientific fact:
Verbal stuff happens mainly on the left hemisphere (again, we know this based on these split-brain experiments).
In other words, when verbalizing stuff, this patient didn’t have access to the information about the snow scene his right brain had seen. The part of his brain that could speak had only seen one image, that of a chicken claw.
The fact this patient had no possible idea why he had pointed to an image of a shovel didn’t stop him. He immediately and confidently replied:
“Oh, that’s simple. The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.”
Hm. Do you see what happened?
This split-brain patient, or rather the left mind in his skull, came up with a story, consistent with the facts he knew (the fact was he had pointed to a picture of a shovel).
Of course, in this case, the story was completely fabricated and wrong, and had nothing to do with the actual reason (that the other half of his brain had seen a snow scene and had connected it to the image of a shovel).
To me, this is really fascinating. Because it’s not just about these rare few people who don’t have a connection between the left and right brain hemispheres.
This same thing is happening in all of us, all the time, even right now as you read this. It’s just not so neatly visible and trackable in connected-brain humans as it is in split-brain humans (hence why this research won the Nobel Prize).
This is cool knowledge on its own. But it also practical consequences, and gives you specific technique to practice in case you want to influence others.
This technique is nothing new. But it is immensely powerful. (And no, it’s not “Tell a stawrry.”)
You probably know the technique I have in mind. But if not, you can find it in my upcoming book, full title:
10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters
My goal is to finish and publish this book by March 24.
Until then, I will be writing about this book and how it’s progressing, plus what I’m thinking about doing to make it a success when it comes out.
If you are interested in the topic of this book, and you’re thinking you might wanna get a copy when it comes out, click below. I’m planning some launch bonuses and I will be dripping them out early to people on this pre-launch list:
Click here to get on the bonus-dripping pre-launch list for my new 10 Commandments book