The Real Cognitive Neuroscience Behind ‘Severance’

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To quitwhich imagines a world where a person’s work and personal life are separated by surgery, returns Friday for its long-awaited second season. Although this fascinating science fiction idea is absurd, it also touches on a question that neuroscience has been trying to answer for decades: Can the human mind really be divided into two?

Surprisingly, there are “split brain” patients since the 1940s. In order to relieve the symptoms of epilepsy, these patients underwent surgery to separate the left and right hemispheres. Similar surgeries it still happens today.

After the survey on this type of surgery showed that the separated hemispheres of split-brain patients can process more independently. This leads to the difficult possibility that this process creates two different ideas living in the same brain.

In one season of To quitHelly R (Britt Lower) faces a conflict between her “innie” (the part of her mind that remembers her work life) and her “outie” (the part outside of work). Similarly, there is evidence of the conflict between the two hemispheres of the real brain patients.

When you talk to patients with split brain, you are often talking to the left side of the brain, which is responsible for speech. However, some patients are able to communicate from their right world by writing, for example, or arranging Scrabble letters.

A young patient in one study he was asked what job he would like in the future. His left country chose to work in a modern design office. However, his right side produced letters that spelled out “car racing.”

Patients with split brain reported that “Alien hand syndrome,” where one of their hands is known to move at will. This shows that two different “people” can live in the same brain and have different goals.

In To quithowever, both innie and outie have the opportunity to speak. This is one indication that the hypothetical “separation method” must have a more complex separation of brain networks.

An example of a difficult separation of duties was described in Neil’s case reportin 1994. Neil was a young man who had several problems following a tumor of the pineal gland. One of these complications was a rare form of amnesia. It meant that Neil couldn’t remember what happened in his time or talk about what he learned at school. Also, he could not read, although he could write, and he could not name things, although he could draw.

Surprisingly, Neil was able to continue his studies. Researchers were impressed by how he managed to complete his school studies despite not remembering what he was studying. He asked her about the novel she was studying at school, Cider And Rosie and Laurie Lee. During the conversation, Neil couldn’t remember anything about the book, not even the title. But when the researcher asked Neil to write down everything he could remember about the book, he wrote “Geranium windows of Geranium Cider and Rosie Dranium the smell of wet peppar (sic) and the growth of mushrooms” – all words related to the book. Since Neil could not read, he asked the researcher: “What did I write?”