Dual consciousness in one head ???

[Alfred001]

I overheard yesterday a part of some sort of a talk given by Steven Pinker (I was passing through the hallway at my university and I heard it out of a computer in someone's office) and I must have misheard him because what I thought I heard was that he said that if you cut the connection between the two lobes of the brain that you get two consciousnesses in one skull.

 

I know I must have misheard this and I can't find anything with a search on google, but I HAD to ask about this, is there anything like this possible???

[Ringer]

No, it's very true. Look up split brain patients or experiments.

[J.Nassar]

Until now it hasn't been confirmed, there is always a dominant lobe in each person, I'm guessing it will be the source of the consciousness when you split the two halfs, patients that had this procedures may seem like they're two persons at a time but it's just mental deficiency because the connection has been cut off, it's true in a sense that you might not be able to move you're right hand when you want to but sometimes it just moves, I guess one side functions using consciousness and the other functions using subconsciousness either I don't know, it's just a hypothesis.

[Ringer]

Until now it hasn't been confirmed, there is always a dominant lobe in each person, I'm guessing it will be the source of the consciousness when you split the two halfs, patients that had this procedures may seem like they're two persons at a time but it's just mental deficiency because the connection has been cut off, it's true in a sense that you might not be able to move you're right hand when you want to but sometimes it just moves, I guess one side functions using consciousness and the other functions using subconsciousness either I don't know, it's just a hypothesis.

Please cite the sources for your statements.

[J.Nassar]

Please cite the sources for your statements.

I said it's just a hypothesis.

[Strange]

This procedure is sometimes done to treat severe epilepsy. There is a discussion of some of the effects here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain

 

Whether that means there are "two consciounesses" in one head rather depends on how you define consciousness. As there is no such definition it seems to be an essentially meaningless question, to me.