Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!csdev!ll1a!spl1!laidbak!att!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax!mtxinu!sybase!jeffl@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
From: mtxinu!sybase!jeffl@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Jeff Lichtman)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Logic and Language
Message-ID: <8847@spl1.UUCP>
Date: 3 Nov 88 05:31:39 GMT
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> I recently heard of a study where the brains of males and
> females were disected and compared.  They found that the bundle of
> fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain is consistantly
> and significantly thicker in females than in males.  Since the left
> brain supposedly controls the language and logical functions and the
> right side supposedly controls the emotions, they theorized that this
> greater connectivity enables women to combine the two realms of
> thought more than men.

The split-brain theory has been largely debunked.  The original evidence
came from people who had a type of epilepsy which could be controlled
by severing the corpus callosum, the tissue that connects the two brain
hemispheres.  People who had undergone this operation could function
normally most of the time, but some experiments showed that their brain
function was split.  For example, they could name objects that they held
in their right hands, but could not name the same objects held in their
left hands (the nerve bundles cross over, so left-hand sensations go to
the right side of the brain).

Of course, most of us don't have rare forms of epilepsy and haven't had
our brain hemispheres separated.  Experiments on people with "normal"
brains have not been able to uncover a difference in function between the
two hemispheres.  It seems likely that logic and language are not physically
separated from pattern recognition and emotion, as had previously been
supposed.
-- 
Jeff Lichtman at Sybase
{mtxinu,pacbell}!sybase!jeffl
"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent..."