Thread: Dreams In the Split-Brained Person

When people have surgery to help with an epilepsy problem, they often have their Corpus Callosum severed. This separates the two hemispheres of the brain and therefore they are unable to communicate with one another. For more information, refer to this article by Michael S. Gazzaniga...

http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/splitbrain.pdf

Anyway, I was wondering how some of the topics in this piece are reflected in regards to lucid dreaming for split brain people. The article states that the left hemisphere of the brain has a higher level of consciousness than the right hemisphere, allowing the left hemisphere to figure out issues and problem solve when it can't back up something it does (i.e., When it points to a correct picture when shown visual stimuli but it does not know why so it makes up a reason). But while the left has a higher level of consciousness, the right hemisphere is dominant for visual and motor tasks. I see this as a potential conflict because, when lucid, dreams appear to be much more vivid and complex (right brain) but one must also be consciously aware that he/she is dreaming (left brain)!

I was just reading up on this as an assignment for a speech class but I thought that it might lead to some interesting discussions regarding lucid dreaming (or dreams in general, for that matter, which is why this is in the General Dream Discussion section).

The board is now open! Discuss!