Corpus Callosum

So are you left or right brain-dominant? “According to the theory of left-brain or right-brain dominance, each side of the brain controls different types of thinking. Additionally, people are said to prefer one type of thinking over the other. For example, a person who is ‘left-brained’ is often said to be more logical, analytical, and objective, while a person who is ‘right-brained’ is said to be more intuitive, thoughtful, [artistic] and subjective…

“The right brain-left brain theory originated in the work of Roger W. Sperry, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981. While studying the effects of epilepsy, Sperry discovered that cutting the corpus collosum (the structure that connects the two hemispheres of the brain) could reduce or eliminate seizures.

“However, these patients also experienced other symptoms after the communication pathway between the two sides of the brain was cut. For example, many split-brain patients found themselves unable to name objects that were processed by the right side of the brain, but were able to name objects that were processed by the left-side of the brain. Based on this information, Sperry suggested that language was controlled by the left-side of the brain.

“Later research has shown that the brain is not nearly as dichotomous as once thought. For example, recent research has shown that abilities in subjects such as math are actually strongest when both halves of the brain work together. Today, neuroscientists know that the two sides of the brain work together to perform a wide variety of tasks and that the two hemispheres communicate through the corpus collosum.” psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/a/left-brain-right-brain.htm

The University of Utah has worked to illustrate more particularly why the brain isn’t so simply divided in such clearly definable task orientation. “The research team conducted a two-year study of 1,011 people who were part of the International Neuroimaging Data-Sharing Initiative (INDI), and who were between the ages of 7 and 29… The scientists conducted the brain measurements using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) analysis, which involved the participants lying in the scanner for 5 to 10 minutes while their ‘resting’ brain measurements were taken. This allowed the researchers to correlate brain activity in one area of the brain and compare it with another…The results of the scan showed patterns indicating that a brain connection may be strongly left or right-lateralized. But they found no relationship that individuals ‘preferentially’ used their left-brain network or right-brain more often.” MedicalNewsToday.com, August 19^th.

But brain fans, that little link between our two brain halves might tell us a bit more than we may have previously thought. Albert Einstein’s brain, for example, is simply fascinating. After all, “[i]n 1905, at the astoundingly young ate of 26, Albert Einstein came up with the quantum theory of light, proved the existence of atoms, and created the theory of special relativity. If you're wondering how so much genius could possibly be jam-packed into one head, a new study just published in the journal Brain, provides a clue.

“It turns out that Einstein had a killer corpus callosum--a large bundle of fibers connecting the left and right hemispheres to each other. ‘The corpus callosum keeps each side of the brain informed about what the other half is doing,’ says Dean Falk, a professor of anthropology at Florida State University, who contributed to the study. According to Falk, the corpus callosum is both physically and cognitively important. The inter-brain connection allows our hands to coordinate and our bodies to move with intention. But it also allows thoughts and ideas that are generated in the right brain to be processed and expressed with language, which originates in the left. ‘We all have that connection between the left and right,’ says Falk, ‘but for Einstein, the connection was extraordinary.’” FastCompany.com, October 17^th. All this determined from a bunch of photographs taken in 1955 and reanalyzed in 2010.

For folks with MS, it is this brain link that is likely to be a brain element that is being attacked. But if your corpus callosum is fat, you just might be really, really brilliant. Line up, smart folks, and let us scan your brain! Got all those brain functions coordinatin’ and rollin’ along! But I am terrified at what that corpus callosum might look like in too many elected officials. It might be a new branch of “string theory”!

I’m Peter Dekom, and space just might not be the final frontier… it just might be our very necessary desire to explore and understand the most mysterious part of the human body.