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There was a man by the name of Roger W. Sperry who won a Nobel prize. He studied something truly bizarre: people with split brains. In the 60′s, neurosurgeons tried a radical new procedure designed to help people who had extremely severe cases of epilepsy. Epilepsy manifests as uncontrollable bodily seizures, but inside the brain, it’s more like an out-of-control electrical storm that spreads like wildfire. In an attempt to prevent that storm from spreading and thus hopefully to reduce the effects of the onset of a seizure, they cut the bundle of nerve fibers, called the corpus callosum, that connects the two hemispheres of the brain so that a seizure could be isolated to only one hemisphere. This helped somewhat, but since the the corpus callosum is the vital pathway that lets the two hemispheres of the brain communicate and work as one, the aftereffects of the surgery provided an extremely important insight into how our brains function.

Sperry took dozens of these people who had been operated on, and gave them a variety of cognitive tests to see what happened. His conclusion was that the two hemispheres of the brain normally work together as a whole, but each is specialized to certain tasks. Moreover, they almost seem to have their own personalities.

Now, keep in mind that for all intensive purposes, these people seem to be completely normal. The optic nerve in each eye branches into two so that the left visual field is transmitted to the right hemisphere and the right visual field is transmitted to the left hemisphere. This makes sense since the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body and the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body. Through this, both hemispheres are able to see the world and react normally. The difference shows up only in two places: the person’s consciousness and occasionally in conflicting behaviors.

The behaviors are fascinating, and have been dubbed “alien hand syndrome” where the left hand seems to have a mind of its own sometimes. For instance, while the right hand may reach out to select a certain shirt to wear for the day, the left hand may grab a different one. This is a manifestation of the different personalities that emerge when the two hemispheres can’t communicate directly anymore. (Keep in mind that when the two hemispheres are connected normally, they work together in every way to make decisions so that we don’t actually have two consciousnesses. In a healthy brain, there is just one that happens to be the product of two parts working together seamlessly.)

That isn’t the most interesting part, though. The interesting part is the effects it has on a person’s consciousness. Namely, the only thing they notice is not being conscious of the left side of their body any more. Their left side still acts and reacts normally, since the right hemisphere is directing things as normal, but they’re not consciously aware of it.

You know what that means? The language centers of the brain with our ability to express ourself, as well as the sense of “self” that we have is located in the left hemisphere. Now things get interesting!

A researcher by the name of Michael Gazzanaga made one of the most important, yet underrated, discoveries about brain function. They took a split-brain patient and had them face the center of a blank screen. They then flashed two pictures, one on the left side of the screen, and a different picture on the right side of the screen. This way, each hemisphere was only capable of perceiving one picture. The subject was then given a series of additional pictures to look over and choose the one that was most relevant to the picture they saw.

In one example, they flashed a picture of a chicken claw for the left hemisphere to see and a snowy scene for the right hemisphere to see. When given the additional pictures, the subject pointed to the chicken with his right hand, which matched with the picture of the chicken claw that the left hemisphere saw. His left hand, however, pointed to a picture of a shovel, matching the snow scene his right hemisphere saw. When asked to explain his choices, he responded: “Oh, that’s simple. The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.”

But hold on. That hand pointed at the shovel because it related to a snowy scene. It had nothing at all to do with cleaning a chicken coop. The left hemisphere put together a story that seemed to fit everything together, but it was completely wrong!

Gazzanaga dubbed this function of the left hemisphere “the interpreter”. Remember that the left hemisphere of the brain is the one that is responsible for verbal (and logical) expression. This means that the right hemisphere doesn’t HAVE a verbal consciousness. Furthermore, the right hemisphere seems to be more emotionally-focused.

Think about it. Even if the two hemispheres are communicating normally, they communicate differently. When something that is nonverbal in nature happens in the brain, such as an emotional reaction like the ones that drive our behaviors, the left hemisphere has a need to interpret and narrate it. But because verbal and nonverbal communication aren’t the same, the “interpreter” makes up an explanation–and it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not!

So this is where I come to the title of this article. Each and every one of us lies to ourselves every day. We all have this part of our brain that tries to put a logical, verbal narrative to things, even when faced with the illogical–particularly our emotions. Now, think about it. If emotions are what are actually causing the problem, but the part of our brain that’s responsible for reason and building that narrative can’t directly understand those emotions, doesn’t it make sense that any explanation we come up with for those emotions and for our irrational actions would be WRONG?

This is where excuses come in. We are driven to behave certain ways through sheer emotional reaction. AFTER we feel a certain way and act on it, our brain puts together a reason that sounds good in order to make it seem logical. This may just be how schizophrenics and other psychotic people justify the way they act. In any case, this is how we justify even simple little things like being jealous of someone’s success because we feel inadequate, but we rationalize that they’re just a stuck up asshole, anyway. We rationalize that there’s something wrong with the other person, even though we feel there’s something wrong with us.

This is also why therapy is completely useless. If problems are caused by emotions, then trying to figure them out does nothing other than to create a whole new set of rationalizations and narratives to make the irrational seem logical. We feel a certain way, which drives us to act a certain way, and then we explain it after the fact. That’s how it works. The problem is that the explanation is there to explain the behavior, and doesn’t really change the feelings that were there. And, let me reiterate, this interpreter mechanism happens AFTER the fact, so trying to change how you think about something does nothing to affect how you feel about it, other than to give you a false sense of understanding, familiarity, and control.

I mean, really. Think about it. What if everything you ever said to yourself to explain why you are the way you are is a complete lie that YOU fabricated? On the surface it may SEEM reasonable to be or act a certain way because of a myriad of reasons. But if those reasons are all false, especially the ones that tell you that this is just how you have to live your life, what if you’re wrong and you actually CAN change or accomplish something that you seem irrationally to be unable to do?

This is the real secret of personal change. Understand that the natural mechanism of your brain is to lie to you in a way that is perceived to be helpful and maintain a sense of order. But if the rationalizations you come up with all help you to stay stuck in your problems, then they aren’t helpful. Furthermore, because they’re not true, you don’t have to believe them!

Now, if your mind is reeling right now, that’s okay. Take some time to digest it. It’s a pretty big bite of reality I’ve just handed you. When you’re ready, though, you can start to use it to see past the reasons for your personal limitations to the emotions underlying them and overcome them. Despite yourself.

For more information on split-brain patients and Sperry and Gazzanaga’s work, have a look here:

http://cwx.prenhall.com/bookbind/pubbooks/morris4/medialib/readings/split.html

http://www.xula.edu/xulanexus/issue1/Dauphin.html

http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~fle/gazzaniga.html

http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/split-brain/background.html

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/split.html

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