# How would one percieve being split down the middle? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 27, 2003, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-one-percieve-being-split-down-the-middle/164633 "2003-03-27T22:55:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![JKB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@JKB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKB)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-one-percieve-being-split-down-the-middle/164633/1 "2003-03-27T22:55:37Z")
Suppose you’re in a hypothetical scenario where you can survive any injury. If you got your head cut off, you’d perceive that your body was gone but “you” were still there from the neck up. But what if someone splits you between the eyes, cutting you into two symetrical halves. How would that be perceived- would you split into two seperate “perceivers?” perhaps this has been asked before but I couldn’t think of a concise way to put this in the search engine ---
**Author:** ![Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speaker_for_the_Dead)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-one-percieve-being-split-down-the-middle/164633/2 "2003-03-27T22:56:32Z")
Weird things start happening when the brain’s hemispheres are seperated in a single body, let alone into two different ones! ---
**Author:** ![Sardaukar3925](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f6c823/32.png) [@Sardaukar3925](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sardaukar3925)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-one-percieve-being-split-down-the-middle/164633/3 "2003-03-27T23:00:27Z")
uhhh… Im no doctor, but I very much doubt that you would be doing much perceiving of any kind after your brain has been sliced in half… ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-one-percieve-being-split-down-the-middle/164633/4 "2003-03-27T23:05:47Z")
There actually are “split brain” patients. They get along surprisingly well, but do have some weird disconnects between areas of reasoning. Things that they see with one eye, for instance, are “unknown” to the brain hemisphere that the other eye communicates to. By the way, the person in question would be blind, since, for reasons anatomical, the right-side of your brain processes visual data from your left eye, and vice-versa. In practical terms, one of the two “half-men” would have trouble speaking, since language skills tend to be concentrated in one hemisphere. Ditto for math skills. Another problem would be circulation and digestion: the two “half-men” would each only have half a heart (very bad!) and would also be missing vital parts of the digestive tract. (One would be missing the descending colon; the other wouldn’t have a duodenum!) Trinopus ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-one-percieve-being-split-down-the-middle/164633/5 "2003-03-27T23:35:19Z")
The vision is not completely divided left eye to right hemisphere and right eye to left hemisphere so I believe some low quality vision would survive. I have no data or cite for this, just something I read in optical neural network books and papers when a student. If you consider the brain remains connected (by the same method that the split body remains alive) and are only considering the effect of having eyes that can move independantly of one another, this could be simulated in real life by feeding a camera immage to a screen occupying the entire field of view of one eye, and then moving the camera separately to the experimentee (is that a valid word?). I do not know of such an experiment, but would think it is such a simple idea it must have been tried. Cheers, Bippy ---
**Author:** ![AndrewL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@AndrewL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndrewL)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-one-percieve-being-split-down-the-middle/164633/6 "2003-03-27T23:50:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Trinopus \* > \*\*By the way, the person in question would be blind, since, for reasons anatomical, the right-side of your brain processes visual data from your left eye, and vice-versa. > \*\* Not quite. The right side of the brain processes information from the left half of both retinas, and the left side of the brain processes information from the right half of both retinas. The hypothetical bisected man would still retain partial vision. However, he might be paralyzed. Unless I’m mistaken, the left side of the brain controls voluntary movement on the right side of the bosy, and vice versa. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2003, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-one-percieve-being-split-down-the-middle/164633/7 "2003-03-28T00:10:53Z")
Bippy and AndrewL: oops! Thanks! I thought the crossover was entire. re paralysis, I don’t know… (I’m presuming we’re not worrying about such trivia as the lungs not being able to function because the trachea is dissected – we can imagine an “invisible force field” sealing the open plane of bisection – but you’ve still got a BIG problem with the circulatory system!) Trinopus ---
**Author:** ![DarrenS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/977dab/32.png) [@DarrenS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarrenS)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2003, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-one-percieve-being-split-down-the-middle/164633/8 "2003-03-28T05:07:50Z")
The book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat” (Oliver Sachs I think) deals with such things…e.g. cases where the link between the left and right hemisphered of the brain was severed, but the patient somehow continued to live. ---
**Author:** ![Eclectic\_Skeptic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19b73/32.png) [@Eclectic\_Skeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eclectic_Skeptic)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2003, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-one-percieve-being-split-down-the-middle/164633/9 "2003-03-28T11:01:55Z")
I saw this in one of those ninja movies. The 2 split halves just kind of tottered in a shocked sort of way then fell, one to the north, one to the south. There was a brief squabble over jurisdiction of intestines and such, but it was short lived. ---
**Author:** ![Nitro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@Nitro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nitro)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2003, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-one-percieve-being-split-down-the-middle/164633/10 "2003-03-28T17:38:44Z")
> [@](#): > > this could be simulated in real life by feeding a camera immage to a screen occupying the entire field of view of one eye, and then moving the camera separately to the experimentee (is that a valid word?). I do not know of such an experiment, but would think it is such a simple idea it must have been tried. check out the head gear for and Apache AH-64 pilot. they have one screen occluding the right eye \link\