Jan. 17 — If you’re having trouble recognizing that face in the mirror, chances are there could be a problem in the right side of the brain. Scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston have shown that the ability to recognize who we are is linked to brain activity in one side of the brain.
"IT’S NOT an all-or-nothing phenomenon, but recognizing one’s own face appears to be a preferential ability of the right hemisphere,” said Julian Keenan, a cognitive psychologist at the Massachusetts hospital, affiliated with Harvard Medical School.
He and his colleagues tested the ability of five epilepsy patients being tested for brain surgery to recognize themselves in an image morphed with an image of a famous person. In the preoperative tests, each side of the brain was anesthetized.
Each female patient was morphed with image of Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana, while the men assumed the likeness of Bill Clinton or Albert Einstein. The patients were shown and asked to remember the composite image.
While the left hemispheres of the five patients were anesthetized, their right brains could apparently recognize themselves in the morphed images, Keenan said. Once the anesthesia wore off, all five patients remembered seeing their own faces. But when the right hemisphere was numbed, four out of five patients remembered seeing only the famous person.
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http://www.msnbc.com/news/517736.asp
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"Everything was true. God was an astronaut. Oz really is over the
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"IT’S NOT an all-or-nothing phenomenon, but recognizing one’s own face appears to be a preferential ability of the right hemisphere,” said Julian Keenan, a cognitive psychologist at the Massachusetts hospital, affiliated with Harvard Medical School.
He and his colleagues tested the ability of five epilepsy patients being tested for brain surgery to recognize themselves in an image morphed with an image of a famous person. In the preoperative tests, each side of the brain was anesthetized.
Each female patient was morphed with image of Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana, while the men assumed the likeness of Bill Clinton or Albert Einstein. The patients were shown and asked to remember the composite image.
While the left hemispheres of the five patients were anesthetized, their right brains could apparently recognize themselves in the morphed images, Keenan said. Once the anesthesia wore off, all five patients remembered seeing their own faces. But when the right hemisphere was numbed, four out of five patients remembered seeing only the famous person.
Want to learn more?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/517736.asp
------------------
-Administrator / Owner
"Everything was true. God was an astronaut. Oz really is over the
rainbow. ...and Midian is where the monsters live." -Nightbreed