PSYB55H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4.8: Cerebral Cortex
Document Summary
Research on laterality has provided extensive insights into the organization of the human brain. Surgical disconnection of the cerebral hemispheres has produced an extraordinary opportunity to study how perceptual and cognitive processes are distributed and coordinated within the cerebral cortex. We have seen how visual perceptual information, for example, remains strictly lateralized to one hemisphere following callosal section. Tactile-patterned information also remains lateralized, but attentional mechanisms are not divided by separation of the two hemispheres. Taken together, cortical disconnection produces two independent sensory information- processing systems that call upon a common attentional resource system in the carrying out of perceptual tasks. Split-brain studies also have revealed the complex mosaic of mental processes that contribute to human cognition. The two hemispheres do not represent information in an identical manner, as evidenced by the fact that each hemisphere has developed its own set of specialized capacities.
