Roger Sperry

Not that you don’t know this, but our brain consists of two halves with each half controlling the movement and vision on the opposite side of the body.

In 1981 Roger Sperry was credited with the Nobel prize “for his discoveries concerning the functional specialisation of the cerebral hemispheres”.

He can also be credited for doing the first ’split brain’ operation during which the corpus callosum is severed. This part of the brain is the main connection between the left and right brain hemispheres and when it is severed the two halves function virtually independently, largely unaware of the other half.

Sperry, his student, Michael Gazzinga and the neurosurgeon Joseph Bogden performed this operation on a patient suffering from severe epilepsy and subsequently many similar operations were done.

Then followed Ned Herrmann in 1981 with his development of the first four-quadrant instrument and Kobus Neethling then extended the work of Herrmann and Paul Torrance.

Between 1988 and 1991, 2000 adults and 1500 pupils (of equal age distribution between 10 to 19 years) were included in research groups to test Neethling’s model.

Read more about Dr. Roger Walcott Sperry… (a new window will open)