PSY 121 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Phineas Gage, Nostril, Job Performance
Document Summary
1848: explosion at railroad construction site forced steel tamping rod through gage"s head. Survived accident but some said he was no longer gage . Problems with emotional processing & rational decision making. Cerebral lateralization: representations for senses are sent to the opposite hemisphere. Right side left hemisphere: motor commands. Two hemispheres of the brain: hemispheres have different areas of specialization & control opposite sides of the body. If severed through split-brain surgery, perception & memory disturbed, although most other processing intact: e. g. , facial identification tasks by sperry & colleagues. Most right-handed & the majority of left-handed people process language mainly in the left hemisphere. Many researchers believe in left hemisphere dominance. Right hemisphere important for problems involving spatial-visual ability, facial recognition, music processing, and some language abilities. Where is the self: brain scientists consider the mind a physical product of cerebral cortex.
