Sections
Section
4:
Succeeding with half a brain
Previous: Section 3
Next: Section 5
Q: If the two hemispheres are heavily involved in virtually everything we do, what happens when one hemisphere is removed?
Two young men, Nico, an Argentine, and Brooke, an American, provide some insight into this question. Nico's right hemisphere was surgically removed when he was three to control severe epilepsy; he has become an engaging young man who enjoys fencing, art, and singing, and who has been academically and socially successful in school in Spain, where he moved with his family. Brooke's left hemisphere was removed when he was 11, also to control persistent seizures. He, too, is a charming young man who attended high school and college and works at a recycling center. What is striking about these young men is that both are able to do things that they "shouldn't" be able to do according to conventional views of the brain—such as use their remaining neural hardware to produce and understand language and its emotional meanings.
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Self in Relationships
© Patricia Saxler.
Our lives are defined in large part by the relationships we have and our respective roles in each. The Self-in-Relationships Interview (SRI) is a tool to explore the dynamics of those relationships by ranking their level of importance and by assigning a positive or negative valence to each. Through the SRI, originally created by Susan Harter and Ann Monsour (1992) and revised by Kurt Fischer and Bruce Kennedy (1997), the organization of relationships in a person's life is evident from the resulting diagram of concentric circles, with most important relationships in the center circle and those of least importance in the outermost circle. Adjectives are linked to how a person feels in each relationship, such as serious, considerate, honest, or self-conscious. For example, people who perceive their relationship with their mother to be positive and most important would list this information in the inner circle. The dynamic with a souring romantic partner may be categorized as uncomfortable and least important. Relationships with parental figures, siblings, and those in daily living and school environments are also categorized. As the interviewees' depiction of relationships become personalized, they capture the most salient and relevant characteristics of a person's role in these social dynamics. The SRI provides a platform for mapping out the different sides of ourselves across relationships. It can reveal the truth behind the cliché about "being different things to different people."
Image: SIR diagram showing a set of lines drawn by the participant between self-descriptions and/or categories that "relate to self." Source: Laura Hsu (from her PhD dissertation).
In addition to providing a visual representation of an interviewee's web of individual relationships, the SRI also explores how an individual sees the connections among these relationships and how he or she describes them. Participants are asked to indicate which relationships and descriptors go together and to categorize them. These self-generated categories can include social life, ideals, or identity. (See the circled items in the SRI figure.) Next, participants mark with solid lines those categories that seem to go together and mark with dotted lines those categories in apparent conflict. Participants mark conflicting or contradictory self-descriptions with an "X" (for example, "I can be kind in this dynamic and mean in the context of this other relationship"). In this way, the SRI diagram provides a more integrated visual demonstration of the dynamics between and among relationships.
The SRI has proved to be useful across research, education, and in clinical settings. The cases of Nico and Brooke, two young men each missing half of a brain, are described in this unit (Unit 1, Section 4) and exemplify how closely the brains we have to work with affect, define, and constrain our behavior. For Nico, the SRI helped researchers understand the connection between his avoidance of discussing emotions and his obligatory reliance on the left hemisphere. With no access to the right hemisphere, Nico could not draw on regions where much of language processing related to emotional information typically occurs. On the other hand, Brooke indulged in the descriptions he offered, showcasing his access to the right hemisphere; but, lacking a left hemisphere, he could not reign in his elaborated discussion.
REFERENCES:
- Fischer, K.W., and B. Kennedy. "Tools for Analyzing the Many Shapes of Development: The case of self-in-relationships in Korea." In E. Amsel and K. A. Renninger (Eds.), Change and Development: Issues of Theory, Method, and Application. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum (1997):117-152.
- Harter, S., and A. Monsour. "Developmental analysis of conflict caused by opposing attributes in the adolescent self-portrait." Developmental Psychology Vol. 28, Issue 2 (March, 1992): 251-260.
Along with Ekman's test of facial recognition and the Self-In-Relationships Interview (see sidebar above), Mary Helen Immordino-Yang designed two tests (top)
(End of the first column online)
for her study of these young men's ability to understand and produce the prosody of language. One test determined how Nico's and Brooke's prosodic discrimination and comprehension compared to their peers, and one test compared the intonation patterns in their speech to that of their peers. Although the boys certainly revealed weaknesses, they generally compared favorably to their peers. How can these findings be interpreted in terms of the young men's emotional profiles? What can the results teach us about brain plasticity and development, especially in social contexts, and their relation to compensation and learning?
Nico's Story
The right hemisphere of the brain is generally considered to be dominant for many functions, including prosody. When he was three years old, Nico suffered from life-threatening epileptic seizures and...
Brooke's Story
At the age of 11, Brooke Smith had the left side of his brain removed. The left hemisphere of the brain is generally considered the locus of detailed, procedural tasks, such as language and reading. Brooke's story...
