ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Roger Wolcott Sperry

Roger Wolcott Sperry was a very smart man who studied about how our brains work. He discovered that our brains have two sides, the left and the right side, and they do different things. The left side is in charge of things like speaking, writing, and doing math. The right side, on the other hand, is in charge of things like art, music, and creativity.

Sperry also found out that if you cut the part of the brain which connects the left and right sides, a person's brain won't work as well. This cut is called the corpus callosum. But through his experiments with split-brain patients, people who had this cut, Sperry discovered that each side of the brain can still work well on its own. This means that the left side can still do its job and the right side can still do its job, even though they can't communicate with each other as well.

Sperry's findings about the two sides of the brain and the effects of the corpus callosum have helped us understand how our brains work and why we do the things we do.