Roger Sperry

Information about Roger Sperry

Neuropsychology


Topics
Brain-computer interfaces • Brain damage
Brain regions • Clinical neuropsychology
Cognitive neuroscience • Human brain
Neuroanatomy • Neurophysiology
Phrenology • Popular misconceptions
Brain functions
arousal • attention
concentration • consciousness
decision-making • executive functions
language • learning • memory
motor coordination • perception
planning • problem solving
thinking
People
Arthur L. Benton • Antnio Damsio
Kenneth Heilman • Phineas Gage
Norman Geschwind • Elkhonon Goldberg
Donald Hebb • Alexander Luria
Muriel D. Lezak • Brenda Milner
Karl Pribram • Oliver Sacks
Roger Sperry
Tests
Bender-Gestalt Test
Benton Visual Retention Test
Clinical Dementia Rating
Continuous Performance Task
Glasgow Coma Score
Hayling and Brixton tests
Lexical decision task
Mini mental state examination
Stroop task
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
Wisconsin card sorting task
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Roger Wolcott Sperry (August 20, 1913 - April 17, 1994) was a neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate who, together with David Hunter Hubel and Torsten Nils Wiesel, won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work with split-brain research.

Sperry was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Francis Bushnell and Florence Kraemer Sperry. His father was in banking, and his mother trained in business school. Roger had one brother, Russell Loomis. Their father died when Roger was 11. Afterwards, his mother became assistant to the principal in the local high school.

Sperry went to Hall High School in West Hartford, Connecticut, where he was a star athlete in several sports, and did well enough academically to win a scholarship to Oberlin College. At Oberlin, he was captain of the basketball team, and he also took part in varsity baseball, football, and track; he received his bachelor's degree in English in 1935 and a master's degree in psychology in 1937. He received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1941, supervised by Paul A. Weiss. Sperry then did post-doctoral research with Karl Lashley at Harvard University.

In 1942, he began work at the Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology, then a part of Harvard University. He left in 1946 to become an assistant professor, and later associate professor, at the University of Chicago. In 1952, he became the Section Chief of Neurological Diseases and Blindness at the National Institutes of Health. In 1954, he accepted a position as a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where he performed his most famous experiments with his then student Michael Gazzaniga.

Before Sperry's experiments, some research evidence seemed to indicate that areas of the brain were largely undifferentiated and interchangeable. In his early experiments, Sperry showed that the opposite was true: after early development, circuits of the brain are largely hardwired.

In his Nobel-winning work, Sperry separated the corpus callosum, the area of the brain used to transfer signals between the right and left hemispheres, to treat epileptics. Sperry and his colleagues then tested these patients with tasks that were known to be dependent on specific hemispheres of the brain and demonstrated that the two halves of the brain may each contain consciousness. In his words, each hemisphere is...

"indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and . . . both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel."(Sperry, 1974)

This research contributed greatly to understanding the lateralization of brain function. In 1989, Sperry also received the National Medal of Science.

In 1949, Sperry married Norma Gay Deupree. They had one son, Glenn Michael, and one daughter, Janet Hope.

Bibliography

  • "The problem of central nervous reorganization after nerve regeneration and muscle transposition." Quart. Rev. Biol. 20: 311-369 (1945)
  • "Regulative factors in the orderly growth of neural circuits." Growth Symp. 10: 63-67 (1951)
  • "Cerebral organization and behavior." Science 133: 1749-1757 (1961)
  • "Chemoaffinity in the orderly growth of nerve fiber patterns and connections." Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 50: 703-710 (1963)
  • "Interhemispheric relationships: the neocortical commissures; syndromes of hemisphere disconnection." (with M.S. Gazzaniga, and J.E. Bogen) In: P. J. Vinken and G.W. Bruyn (Eds.), Handbook Clin. Neurol (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co.) 4: 273-290 (1969)
  • "Lateral specialization in the surgically separated hemispheres." In: F. Schmitt and F. Worden (Eds.), Third Neurosciences Study Program (Cambridge: MIT Press) 3: 5-19 (1974)
  • "Mind-brain interaction: mentalism, yes; dualism, no." Neuroscience 5: 195-206. Reprinted in: A.D. Smith, R. Llanas and P.G. Kostyuk (Eds.), Commentaries in the Neurosciences (Oxford: Pergamon Press) pp. 651-662 (1980)
  • "Science and moral priority: merging mind, brain and human values." Convergence, Vol. 4 (Ser. ed. Ruth Anshen) New York: Columbia University Press (1982)

External links

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Wolf Prize in Medicine Laureates
George Snell / Jean Dausset / Jon J. van Rood (1978) • Roger Sperry / Arvid Carlsson / Oleh Hornykiewicz (1979) • Csar Milstein / Leo Sachs / James L. Gowans (1980) • Barbara McClintock / Stanley Norman Cohen (1981) • Jean-Pierre Changeux / Solomon H. Snyder / James W. Black (1982) • Donald F. Steiner (1984) • Osamu Hayaishi (1986) • Puedro Cuatrecasas / Meir Wilchek (1987) • Henri G. Hers / Elizabeth F. Neufeld (1988) • John Gurdon / Edward B. Lewis (1989) • Maclyn McCarty (1990) • Seymour Benzer (1991) • Judah Folkman (1992) • Michael Berridge / Yasutomi Nishizuka (1994) • Stanley B. Prusiner (1995) • Mary F. Lyon (1997) • Michael Sela / Ruth Arnon (1998) • Eric Kandel (1999) • Avram Hershko / Alexander Varshavsky (2001) • Ralph L. Brinster / Mario Capecchi / Oliver Smithies (2002) • Robert Weinberg / Roger Y. Tsien (2004) • Alexander Levitzki / Anthony R. Hunter / Anthony Pawson (2005)
I I I I I
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Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Laureates
Baruch Blumberg / Daniel Gajdusek (1976) • Roger Guillemin / Andrew W. Schally / Rosalyn Yalow (1977) • Werner Arber / Daniel Nathans / Hamilton O. Smith (1978) • Allan Cormack / Godfrey Hounsfield (1979) • Baruj Benacerraf / Jean Dausset / George Snell (1980) • Roger Sperry / David H. Hubel / Torsten Wiesel (1981) • Sune Bergstrm / Bengt I. Samuelsson / John Vane (1982) • Barbara McClintock (1983) • Niels Jerne / Georges Khler / Csar Milstein (1984) • Michael Brown / Joseph L. Goldstein (1985) • Stanley Cohen / Rita Levi-Montalcini (1986) • Susumu Tonegawa (1987) • James W. Black / Gertrude B. Elion / George H. Hitchings (1988) • J. Michael Bishop / Harold E. Varmus (1989) • Joseph Murray / E. Donnall Thomas (1990) • Erwin Neher / Bert Sakmann (1991) • Edmond Fischer / Edwin G. Krebs (1992) • Richard J. Roberts / Phillip Sharp (1993) • Alfred G. Gilman / Martin Rodbell (1994) • Edward B. Lewis / Christiane Nsslein-Volhard / Eric F. Wieschaus (1995) • Peter Doherty / Rolf M. Zinkernagel (1996) • Stanley B. Prusiner (1997) • Robert F. Furchgott / Louis Ignarro / Ferid Murad (1998) • Gnter Blobel (1999) • Arvid Carlsson / Paul Greengard / Eric Kandel (2000)
Neuropsychology is an interdisciplinary branch of psychology and neuroscience that aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relate to specific psychological processes and overt behaviors.
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A brain-computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain-machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a human or animal brain (or brain cell culture) and an external device.
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Brain damage or brain injury is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells.

Brain damage may occur due to a wide range of conditions, illnesses, injuries, and as a result of iatrogenesis.
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Clinical neuropsychology is a sub-specialty of clinical psychology that specialises in the diagnostic assessment and treatment of patients with brain injury or neurocognitive deficits.
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Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological mechanisms underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes and their behavioral manifestations.
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The human brain controls the central nervous system (CNS), by way of the cranial nerves and spinal cord, the peripheral nervous system (PNS) and regulates virtually all human activity.
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Neuroanatomy is the branch of anatomy that studies the anatomical organization of the nervous system. In vertebrate animals, the routes that the myriad nerves take from the brain to the rest of the body (or "periphery"), and the internal structure of the brain in particular, are
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Neurophysiology is a part of physiology. Neurophysiology is the study of nervous system function. Primarily, it is connected with neurophysiology and also to with neurobiology, psychology, neurology, clinical neurophysiology, electrophysiology, ethology, neuroanatomy, cognitive
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Phrenology (from Greek: φρήν, phrēn, "mind"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is a theory which claims to be able to determine character, personality traits and criminality on the basis of the shape of the head (i.e.
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Wikipedia articles related to Brain Function

  • Visual system
  • Auditory system
  • Olfactory system
  • Gustatory system
  • Somatosensory system
  • Visual perception
  • Motor cortex
  • Broca's area (aka Language Area)
  • Lateralization of brain function

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Arousal is a physiological and psychological state of being awake. It involves the activation of the reticular activating system in the brain stem, the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system, leading to increased heart rate and blood pressure and a condition of
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Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. Examples include listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in the room (the cocktail party effect) or listening to a
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Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. Examples include listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in the room (the cocktail party effect) or listening to a
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Consciousness is a characteristic of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment.
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Decision making is the cognitive process leading to the selection of a course of action among variations. Every decision making process produces a final choice. It can be an action or an opinion. It begins when we need to do something but know not what.
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Executive functions is a term synonymous with cognitive control, and used by psychologists and neuroscientists to describe a loosely defined collection of brain processes whose role is to guide thought and behaviour in accordance with internally generated goals or plans.
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In the philosophy of language, a natural language (or ordinary language) is a language that is spoken, written, or signed (visually or tactilely) by humans for general-purpose communication, as distinguished from formal languages (such as computer-programming
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Learning is the acquisition and development of memories and behaviors, including skills, knowledge, understanding, values, and wisdom. It is the goal of education, and the product of experience.
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In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information. Traditional studies of memory began in the realms of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing the memory.
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Gross motor coordination addresses the gross motor skills: walking, running, climbing, jumping, crawling, lifting one's head, sitting up, etc.

Fine motor coordination
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perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. It is a task far more complex than was imagined in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was proclaimed that building perceiving machines would take about a decade, but, needless to say,
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For planning in AI, see .


Planning is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired future on some scale.
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Problem solving forms part of thinking. Considered the most complex of all intellectual functions, problem solving has been defined as higher-order cognitive process that requires the modulation and control of more routine or fundamental skills (Goldstein & Levin, 1987).
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Thought or thinking is a mental process which allows beings to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires.
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Arthur Lester Benton, Ph.D., (October 16, 1909 - December 27, 2006) was a neuropsychologist and Emeritus Professor of Neurology and Psychology at the University of Iowa.

He received his A.B. from Oberlin College in 1931, his A.M.
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Kenneth M. Heilman is an American behavioral neurologist.

Biography

Early Life and Career

Kenneth Heilman was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He attended and graduated from medical school at the University of Virginia in 1963.
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Phineas P. Gage (1823 – May 21, 1860) was a railroad construction foreman who suffered a traumatic brain injury when a tamping iron accidentally passed through his skull, damaging the frontal lobes of his brain.
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Norman Geschwind can be considered the father of modern behavioral neurology in America. He was mentor to the cadre of behavioral neurologists who would shape the subspecialty for the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Dr.
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Elkhonon Goldberg (1946) is a neuropsychologist and cognitive neuroscientist.

Biography

Elkhonon Golderg was born in Riga, Latvia in 1946, studied at Moscow State University with the great neuropsychologist Alexander Luria and moved to the United States in 1974.
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Donald Olding Hebb (July 22, 1904 – August 20, 1985) was a psychologist who was influential in the area of neuropsychology, where he sought to understand how the function of neurons contributed to psychological processes such as learning.
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