In this book we are trying to illuminate the persistent and nagยญ ging questions of how mind, life, and the essence of being relate to brain mechanisms. We do that not because we have a commitยญ ment to bear witness to the boring issue of reductionism but beยญ cause we want to know more about what it's all about. How, inยญ deed, does the brain work? How does it allow us to love, hate, see, cry, suffer, and ultimately understand Kepler's laws? We try to uncover clues to these staggering questions by conยญ sidering the results of our studies on the bisected brain. Several years back, one of us wrote a book with that title, and the apยญ proach was to describe how brain and behavior are affected when one takes the brain apart. In the present book, we are ready to put it back together, and go beyond, for we feel that split-brain studies are now at the point of contributing to an understanding of the workings of the integrated mind. We are grateful to Dr. Donald Wilson of the Dartmouth Mediยญ cal School for allowing us to test his patients. We would also like to thank our past and present colleagues, including Richard Nakaยญ mura, Gail Risse, Pamela Greenwood, Andy Francis, Andrea Elยญ berger, Nick Brecha, Lynn Bengston, and Sally Springer, who have been involved in various facets of the experimental studies on the bisected brain described in this book
CONTENT
1 ? The Split Brain and the Integrated Mind -- 2 ? The Nature of Interhemispheric Communication -- 3 ? Cerebral Lateralization and Hemisphere Specialization: Facts and Theory -- 4 ? Brain and Language -- 5 ? Brain and Intelligence -- 6 ? Brain, Imagery, and Memory -- 7 ? On the Mechanisms of Mind -- Author Index