The following essay is reprinted with permission from: conversationAn online publication covering the latest research.
Severance, which imagines a world where a person’s work and personal life are surgically separated, will soon be receiving a second season on Apple TV+. The concept of this exciting science fiction piece is incredible, but it touches on some interesting neuroscience. Can a person’s heart actually be surgically split in two?
Surprisingly, “split-brain” patients exist. Since the 1940s. To control their epilepsy symptoms, these patients underwent surgery to separate their left and right hemispheres. similar surgery It still happens today.
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later research This type of surgery has shown that the separate hemispheres of split-brain patients can process information independently. This raises the disturbing possibility that this procedure could create two separate minds living in one brain.
In Season 1 of Severance, Helly R (Britt Lower) experienced conflict between her “innie” (the side of her mind that remembers her work life) and her “outie” (the side outside of work). similarly, there is evidence Conflict between the two hemispheres of a real split brain patient.
When talking to a split-brain patient, you communicate using the left hemisphere of the brain, which typically controls language. However, some patients are able to communicate in the right hemisphere, such as through writing or Scrabble.
young patient I asked what kind of job I want to have in the future. His left hemisphere chose to work in the office, creating technical drawings. But his right hemisphere arranged the letters “automobile racer.”
Split-brain patients have also been reported. ‘Alien Hand Syndrome’One of the hands is perceived as moving voluntarily. These observations suggest that two conscious “people” can coexist in one brain and have conflicting goals.
However, in Severance, both ins and outs have access to speech. This is one indication that the hypothetical “separation procedure” must involve a more complex separation of brain networks.
Examples of complex functional separation include: Neil’s Case Report1994. Neil was a teenager who faced many challenges due to a pineal gland tumor. One of these difficulties was a rare form of amnesia. This meant that Neil was unable to remember events or report what he had learned at school. He also became able to write but unable to read, and although he could draw, he was unable to name objects.
Amazingly, Neil was able to continue his education. Researchers became interested in how he was able to complete his schoolwork despite having no memory of what he had learned.
They quizzed him about Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee, a novel he was studying at school. During our conversation, Neil couldn’t remember anything about the book. I couldn’t even remember the title. But when researchers asked Neil to write down everything he could remember about the book, he wrote: “Bloodshot Geranium windows Cider with Rosie Dranium smells like damp pepper.” [sic] And mushroom growth” – all words related to the novel. Because Neil could not read, he had to ask the researcher, “What did I write?”
Neil was also able to write down other memories he thought had been lost, including meeting a man with gangrene in hospital. In each case, he was unaware of his memory until he wrote it down and read it back to him. Neil’s case is a striking example. This suggests that it is possible to have rich memories that are inaccessible to our conscious minds.
At Severance, Irving’s (John Turturro) loner is able to access his memories of Innie’s work environment through paintings. He draws the long hallway of the Severed Floor (where his Innie works), despite having no conscious memory of it. Presumably, in the show, the retirement process involves blocking conscious access to memories in the same way that this access was blocked in Neil.
The role of the hippocampus
What brain region could be key to the TV show’s retirement process? The area most associated with remembering the events of the workday is the hippocampus. Interestingly, this same brain region also supports functions such as: expression of space.
The fact that the same neural structures support both remembering that a new co-worker joined the team today and representing the layout of the office suggests that the hippocampus may be a good target for this hypothetical procedure.
In Severance, the transition between in and out occurs within the boundaries of the office, namely at the elevator door. This is reminiscent of the ‘doorway effect’, a phenomenon where you forget something when passing through a doorway.
hippocampus Breaking down our experiences Break it down into episodes so you can remember it later. Entering a new space is a sign that a new episode has begun, which increases forgetting of information spanning that episode. However, the effect is subtle. Sometimes you might walk into the kitchen and forget why you went in, but unlike the dramatic effect of the retirement procedural on the show, you don’t forget that you have children.
Perhaps, in this drama, the hippocampus’s attention to spatial boundaries triggers the switch between the reason and the outer ear.
Unfortunately, the idea that Shaw’s retirement process might involve a simple amputation of the hippocampus has two major flaws.
First, it is not just episodic and spatial memories that are distinguished by Severance. Workers have a lot of semantic knowledge (for example, facts about Lumon, the company they work for, and its founders) that is inaccessible to outsiders. They also form emotional memories associated with the rewards they receive for hard work and the punishments they receive in the break room. This form of memory relies on much more than the hippocampus, which itself is part of the entire brain. episodic memory network It is activated during episodic memory retrieval.
The second flaw is that memory itself is not an isolated process. It is closely linked to perception, attention, language and many other processes. The human memory system is too complex to be completely split in two. But as Severance shows, it’s fun to think about the possibilities.
This article was originally published on: conversation. read original article.
