Post-Commissurotomy Syndrome
There have been many instances in which shortly after surgery the patients do not have control over the left side of the body. Schiffer describes many instances in which a person’s conscious efforts to control the right hemisphere weren’t enough and force had to be used.
v In one case a man and his wife were having a discussion that his right brain must not have agreed with. In order to show its dismay with the topic of conversation, the left arm tried to hit the wife! The man had to physically wrestle the left arm in order to stop it.
v A woman who had just had a commisurotomy performed on her was oversleeping for work, but her right brain heard her alarm and woke up. It realized that the left brain was not aware of the alarm and that she, therefore, was not aware of it either, so the left hand -right brain- was obviously frustrated with the situation and slapped her across the face to wake her up!
v Another gentleman who had been trying to quit smoking tried to light up a cigarette and once he got it lit his left hand would grab the cigarette and put it out!
v Gazzaniga made the discovery that the right brain was mute. A man, while in therapy, was observed to stop talking while holding his coffee cup in his left hand. When he set the cup down, he continued talking. If asked to talk before he had finished with the coffee, he would switch hands and then talk. He was asked to speak while holding it in his left hand and found that he couldn’t.
