Roger Sperry facts for kids

Roger Wolcott Sperry (born August 20, 1913 – died April 17, 1994) was an American scientist who studied the brain. He was a neurobiologist, meaning he studied the nervous system, including the brain. He also won a Nobel Prize for his important work.

He shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with two other scientists, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel. In 1989, Sperry also received the National Medal of Science, another major award.

Roger Sperry: Brain Explorer

Before Roger Sperry's experiments, some scientists thought that different parts of the brain's outer layer, called the cerebral cortex, could easily take over each other's jobs. But Sperry showed that this was not true. He found that after a brain develops early in life, its connections are mostly "hardwired." This means they are set up for specific tasks and don't change much.

What is Split-Brain Research?

Sperry is most famous for his "split-brain" research. For his Nobel Prize-winning work, he studied ten patients who had a special surgery. This surgery was developed in 1940 to help people with very serious epileptic seizures.

The surgery involved cutting the corpus callosum. This is a thick band of nerve fibers that connects the two halves, or hemispheres, of the brain. Its job is to send signals back and forth between the left and right sides.

How Our Brains Work

Sperry and his team tested these patients with tasks that were known to use specific brain hemispheres. They found amazing things! They showed that each half of the brain can work on its own and might even have its own consciousness.

Sperry explained it like this:

indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and . . . both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel

—Roger Wolcott Sperry, 1974

This research helped us understand a lot about how each brain hemisphere works. For example, some activities, like naming objects, are usually done by the left side of the brain. Other tasks, like putting blocks together in a certain way, are often handled by the right side. It seems the left hemisphere is usually better at language, while the right hemisphere is better at visual and building tasks.

See also

• For more information in Spanish: Roger Wolcott Sperry para niños