The Surgery That Proved There Is No Free Will

Starting in the 1940s, a new surgery was being explored to help people with severe epilepsy which involved severing communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. It worked, but caused some very strange side effects. As researchers began to study these side effects, it led to an entirely new understanding of the brain; including the surprising fact that we really don’t have control over our decisions.

Read more about split-brain experiments in Dr. Michael Gazzaniga’s fascinating book, Who’s In Charge?

Here’s a speech Dr. Gazzaniga gave at the University of Edinburgh in 2009:

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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - What Made You Click?
1:35 - Who's In Charge?
3:39 - Split-Brain Surgery
7:37 - The Two Hemispheres
12:00 - The Differences In The Hemispheres
20:12 - The Question of Free Will and Emergence Theory
26:00 - Sponsor - Henson Shaving

[Godsbane]

I once had a migraine whilst walking through a shopping mall. I didn't experience any pain, but one of the strangest experiences of my life occurred. The mall on my left side was completely unoccupied - or so I thought - until suddenly someone appeared in the center of my vision and crossed over to my right hand side. Then it happened again. People were appearing out of nothing, out of this empty mall, and those who crossed from my right side to my left vanished. My brain was mapping out my surroundings. It filled in the missing mall that I maybe couldn't see because of my migraine's aura. But it couldn't map out the moving people until I saw them on my right hand side. It was one of the most surreal moments of my life and I was worried that maybe I was having a stroke. I pretty much immediately saw a doctor and she said that it was much more likely to be a migraine. I get migraines, but I had never had that happen to me before, and it has never happened again (it happened about 20 years ago). After the shock and worry wore off, I just thought, the brain is an amazing thing. And practically everything could be an illusion or hallucination of a brain telling you that everything is completely normal.

[davidbock]

When my son was about 6 and got into some trouble he said "My brain made me do it". Thanks for bringing back this memory.

[queen-patches]

"my ideas aren't my identity" hits hard

[yesyes-ewhl]

Psychedelics are just an exceptional mental health breakthrough. It's quite fascinating how effective they are against depression and anxiety. Saved my life.

[hilerm]

“But WHY did you click the video?”

The chair spin, Joe, the chair spin.

[noahingram]

There is a saying I will paraphrase roughly from the original language into English: "Thoughts are like birds, we can't choose if they land on our head but we decide whether we let them build a nest in our hair"

[jerrik-]

Oh hey, it's me! But mine was not from an injury or surgery, my corpus callosum just doesn't work, and never did. I'm a bifurcated personality, and my hemispheres communicate through other areas of my brain. It's like I'm two people in the one driver seat. Like having an/two imaginary friends but I'm actually both people. We literally talk out everything I do.

Thought I was normal until people talked about their inner dialog and I was like "yeah I hate it when we can't agree on if we like a food, but it's great being able to teach each other stuff" and everyone else was like "wat?"

I hear the word of the things I see, which makes loud environments more difficult to see, unless the loud is music. But I can learn two different subjects at once, which made university rather trivial. I have more poems about bookkeeping than the world really needs...and yes, getting dressed is a real chore sometimes...

[AnomalyINC]

For those who, like me, just wanted to get to the point of how any of this disproves free will:
It doesn't disprove free will, the title is clickbait to get views, and it works.
It's still interesting stuff, well worth watching, but don't expect the elusive truth of consciousness to finally be revealed in a YouTube video.

[asmodahlia]

As someone who has OCD and PTSD that plague me with intrusive thoughts, this is also very freeing. It reminds me that I am not my thoughts and I can more easily dismiss the horrible ones and get on with my day without ruining it.

[Krebzonide]

I was not mindlessly scrolling through my youtube feed. I opened youtube, saw 10 videos I wanted to watched, opennd them all in different tabs, and now I'm watching them one by one.

[athmaid]

Taking neurobiology for my last module in undergrad was both incredibly interesting and terrifying. There's so much contradictory information wizzing around the brain. Constantly connections are strengthened leading to changes in behaviour without us even realising. Aspects of our perception are pieced together in absurd ways, much of the information just made up based on what fits our expectations. It's like our conscious is mostly occupied with not breaking the immersion

[ScoutReaper-znrz]

One thing that always frustrates me is not being able to hold onto a thought while walking through different rooms/thresholds. I'll be in my room and think of something I want/need to do and as soon as I leave the room that the original thought occurred in, it becomes absent from my mind. It isn't until I return to the room the thought took place in that it comes back to me.

[persnickety]

If I'm remembering correctly, Kim Peek was able to use his eyes to simultaneously read two pages of books independent of one another. Each eye could read a different page. He's the man that Dustin Hoffman portrayed in Rain Man. Later, it was determined Mr Peek had FG Syndrome, not autism. I believe this was due to his brain hemispheres being independent of each other. His abilities were amazing! A true savant.

[sgregg]

20 years ago I fell off a mountain. As I fell, my mind seemed to split into two people. One was literally screaming for my mom. The other was calm and thinking so this is how I am going to die. The calm part could hear the screaming but it was like listening to another person. I did not die, but as the rope snapped tight and I stopped falling. The two me's continued to exist for a while. Then there was some mental reset button and I had no idea who I was or where I was, or what I was. I was just existing. Then it all came back together. That was the worst and best day of my life. I was basically high as a kite for 24 hours on all the endorphins.

[Kunt]

I had a severe head injury in my early 30s. I'm 46 now. On the one hand, I seemed to get smarter. I was always good at fixing things and building things, but I was terrible academically. After the head injury, I became interested in so many things that I had no interest in before. I started reading, playing instruments, and seem to be able to remember so many facts and statistics. On the other hand, I stopped working out, became careless with money, started drinking and taking drugs a lot, and started taking massive risks in general. It's as if I lost impulse control. Many of my opinions on things became the opposite. I took a couple of IQ tests. One was 114, and one was 123. I have no doubt it would have been much lower beforehand. But if I could, I would go back to the way I was. I was fit and strong, self disciplined. I had lots of money and assets. My house, cars, and possessions were all neat and tidy. Now everything is a mess. Everyday things I once enjoyed doing seem pointless now. It's like I became a different person.

[jasoncasey]

I clicked on the thumbnail because I've been conditioned to believe that I will enjoy anything this channel produces

[UrielManX]

"I must believe in free will, I have no choice"

[Oasis]

Never mistake a callosotomy for a colostomy.

[brentsaner]

The primary researcher involved in this study has recanted this conclusion and stated it in no way disproves free will.

[sirrebelpaulc]

I did a Buddhist meditation retreat and they said something that really stuck with me, "How liberating it is to know that my thoughts and feelings are not who I am. Who am I then? The one that realizes that."