How many people can live inside in a split brain?

Back in 1939 neuroscientists developed a technique to treat severe epileptic seizures by cutting the central connective tissue between the two hemispheres of the brain in two. This surprisingly simple technique effectively stopped the seizures, but that was hardly the most interesting thing about their findings. Researchers soon discovered that it was possible to design careful experiments that would allow them to communicate with each hemisphere of the brain independently. 

Neuroscience would never be the same again. 

Contrary to how you and I like to think of our conscious selves as a unified whole, Robert Sperry, who later won the Nobel prize for his work on split brains, discovered that each hemisphere processed information on its own. Each hemisphere had its own sense of subjectivity. Not only that, but each side of the brain appeared to be separately conscious from the other half.  

The implications are enormous. In this week's video I pull footage from split brain patients as neuroscientists unpack the strange reality that there might be more than one you inside your own brain.  This research shines a light on the sort of matruskha-doll-esque nature of consciousness that I wrote about in The Wedge. Consciousness doesn't sit inside single discrete objects, but is better understood as existing in the space between objects and biological beings. In other words, nothing is conscious in and of itself. Ratherm consciousness only arises in the relationship between things.