“Does it work?” you ask.

“Sure does,” Mindstein says. “In fact, not only does it limit the spread of the seizures, it also decreases their incidence. But the most interesting thing from our point of view is that these split-brain patients have been extensively studied and much has been learned about the brain in the process.”

“The person responsible for initiating the study of the split-brain patients won a Nobel Prize for his efforts. This was Roger Sperry, who had degrees in psychology before earning a Ph. D. in zoology. Sperry and his associates, such as Michael Gazzaniga, used a procedure such as that shown below to test split-brain patients. What happens is that the patient is told to stare at a fixation point on a screen and a picture of an object is briefly flashed on one side of the screen. If the picture appears on the left side of the screen, in the person's left visual field, the information goes to the right hemisphere of the brain.