Mindstein continues his lecture. “At his Nobel Prize address in Stockholm, Sperry (1982) concluded that the left hemisphere’s abilities tend to be verbal, mathematical, and sequential–one thing after another–whereas the right hemisphere tends to specialize in spatial and imagistic ability. By imagistic, I mean the ability to visualize something, the kind of ability about which we say, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ Pictorial representation is another way to put it. The right hemisphere is good at map reading, for example.

“The left hemisphere is sometimes called the dominant hemisphere because of its language ability. You ask a person a question, and the left hemisphere answers.

“One prediction Sperry’s research can answer was made by an interesting–and somewhat weird–German back in the 19th century. This was Gustav Fechner, who invented psychophysics as a solution to the so-called mind-body problem. Anyway, Fechner speculated that if the corpus callosum were ever cut, the result would be separate consciousness, two brains in one head, in other words.

“Apparently he was right. According to Michael Gazzaniga (1967), ‘All the evidence indicates that separation of the hemispheres creates two independent spheres of consciousness within a single cranium.... This conclusion is disturbing to some people who view consciousness as an indivisible property of the human brain’ (p. 374).”

“Well, that’s all for now,” Dr. Mindstein exclaims. All of the students hurredly begin collecting their belongings. You guess that Mindstein forgot about the last quiz, and you feel relieved until he shouts, “Oh, yes! One more quiz to go.

“Don’t worry,” he continues. "I’ll make zis short. I’ve got zings to do.” Dr. Mindstein seems to slip back into his German accent whenever he gets excited or nervous. What's going on, you wonder...