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quitwhich imagines a world where a person's work and personal life are surgically separated, returns on Friday with its long-awaited second season. Although the concept of this fascinating work of science fiction is far-fetched, it touches on a question that neuroscience has tried to answer for decades: Can a person's mind actually be manipulated? divided into two?
Notably, there have been patients with “split brain” since the 1940s. To control epilepsy symptoms, these patients underwent surgery to separate the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Similar surgery still happens today.
Future research This type of surgery shows that the separate brain hemispheres of split-brain patients can process information independently. This raises the uncomfortable possibility that the procedure creates two separate minds living in one brain.
In season one of quitHelly R (Britt Lower) experiences conflict between her “innie” (the side of her mind that remembers her work life) and her “outie” (the side outside of work). Similar, there is evidence about the conflict between the two hemispheres of the brain in truly split-brain patients.
When talking to a split-brain patient, you often communicate with the left hemisphere, which controls speech. However, some patients can communicate from the right hemisphere by writing, for example, or by arranging Scrabble letters.
A young patient in one study was asked what job he wanted to do in the future. His left brain chose office work as technical drawing. However, his right hemisphere arranged the letters to spell “auto racer.”
Patients with brain separation have also reported “alien hand syndrome,” in which one of their hands is shown to be moving of its own volition. These observations suggest that two separate conscious “people” can coexist in the same brain and may have conflicting goals.
IN quithowever, both innie and outie have the right to speak. This is an indication that the fictional “severing procedure” must involve a more complex division of the brain's networks.
An example of complex functional decomposition has been described in Neil's case reportin 1994. Neil was a troubled teenager after a pineal tumor. One of those difficulties is a rare form of dementia. That meant Neil couldn't recall the day's events or recount what he had learned at school. He also cannot read, although he can write, and he cannot name objects, although he can draw them.
What's amazing is that Neil is still able to keep up with his studies. Researchers became interested in how the boy was able to complete his schoolwork despite no longer remembering what he had learned. They asked him about the novel he was studying at school, Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee. During the conversation, Neil couldn't remember anything about the book – not even the title. But when a researcher asked Neil to write down everything he could remember about the book, he wrote “Bloodshot Geranium windows Cider with Rosie Dranium smells of damp peppar (sic) and fungal growth” – all words are related to the novel. Since Neil couldn't read, he had to ask the researcher: “What did I write?”