Talk:2120: Brain Hemispheres

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 23:34, 7 March 2019 by 162.158.78.208 (talk)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_hemisphere#Hemisphere_lateralization If the left side controls the top half of the body, wouldn't that mean it also controls the right half? 108.162.241.248 20:04, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

It is uncontroversial that many senses and motoric functions are swapped between the right and left side. The anatomy of the nerve swaps can also be shown. But it is still under discussion, why evolution led to this swap (source: Contralateral brain and the even better organized German version Kontralateralität des Vorderhirns) Sebastian --172.68.110.46 08:41, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
I'm referring exclusively to the hypothetical model posed by the comic; rather than the reality.


I don't think the sentence "all 3 claims are false" is accurate. I think the claim that the right side of your brain controls the left side of your body is accurate. It says so on the Wikipedia article mentioned and in several other sources. What the Wikipedia article disputes is whether or not "higher-level" functions are partitioned to one side of the brain. 172.69.42.64 20:29, 6 March 2019 (UTC) Harrison

With regard to the retina, the right half of the brain processes what the right half of each retina receives, and the left half processes what the left half of each retina receives (see e.g. optic nerve), but because our retina is behind the focal point of our lens so all the lightbeams cross and images hit the back of the eyeball upside-down and backwards, that means the halves of our brain process the opposite halves of what we see. But it's the same side of our body! I stopped learning neuroscience after we got to the optic nerve ;p 108.162.221.95 21:48, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
You must've stopped in the middle of the lesson, because the optic nerves split so that both brain halves get a copy of each eye. Your own link points it out in the figure as the "Optic chiasm".--Henke37 (talk) 13:09, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
If you look closer, you can see how the left half of each eye (retina) goes only to the left half of the brain, and same for the right, even though both eyes do go to both sides. The split is by what is seen, not which eye sees it, which specially maps to the left side or right side of the eyeball. 162.158.79.185 19:03, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
I think the "right side of your brain controls the left side of your body" is NOT accurate, it's just closer to truth than the reverse. Some parts of perception and motor control are divided that way, but unless you have corpus callosotomy the high-level control is centralized and/or distributed regardless the side. Would be hard to synchronize both hands if not. -- Hkmaly (talk) 02:05, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Having survived an ischemic stroke on the left side of my brain, which temporarily paralyzed the right side of my body, this comic speaks to me like none other.


Is it possible that the title text is a reference to the whole "magnetic north is actually south" thing?