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Who's in charge? Free will and the science of the brain

Article  in  Laterality · May 2012

DOI: 10.1080/1357650X.2012.690416 · Source: PubMed

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Laterality: Asymmetries of Body,

Brain and Cognition
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Who's in charge? Free will and

the science of the brain
a
Michael C. Corballis
a
Department of Psychology, University of Auckland,
Auckland, New Zealand

Available online: 17 May 2012

To cite this article: Michael C. Corballis (2012): Who's in charge? Free will and the
science of the brain, Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, 17:3,
384-386

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 LATERALITY, 2012, 17 (3), 384
386

Book Review

Who’s in charge? Free will and the science of the brain, by Michael
S. Gazzaniga, New York, HarperCollins, 2011, 260 pp., $27.99 (hardback),
ISBN 978-0-06-190610-7
Downloaded by [University of Auckland Library] at 14:05 17 May 2012

Michael Gazzaniga is perhaps the godfather of this journal. Cerebral

asymmetry had been known since Broca’s observations in the 1860s, but
was largely forgotten until the research on split-brained patients a century
later. In 1981, Roger Sperry received a rather belated Nobel Prize ‘‘for his
discoveries concerning the functional specialization of the cerebral hemi-
spheres,’’ but it is clear that Gazzaniga deserves a good deal of the credit.
Indeed, by his own account, the initial work on split-brained patients was
almost entirely his own, and it was this work that set the stage for the
laterality industry still in force to this day.
As Gazzaniga recounts the story in this book, he travelled from
Dartmouth College in New Hampshire to Caltech in California, probably
around 1960, because he was intrigued by Roger Sperry’s work on neural
regeneration. He changed his plans when he discovered the lab to be mainly
occupied with callosal function in animals. This gave him the idea of testing
split-brained humans. He returned to Dartmouth and established procedures
for testing such patients, and then drove to Rochester in New York State to
test a group of patients previously operated on by the surgeon William van
Wagenen. This venture fell through, but he then discovered a patient in Los
Angeles. More patients were to follow, and the split-brain era was born. The
procedures devised by Gazzaniga for testing split-brained patients were
widely adopted for assessing laterality in the neurologically normal, as well
as in other patient groups, and they continue today in the pages of Laterality.
What is remarkable about this story is that Roger Sperry is not mentioned
at all in relation to the research on split-brained patients, although it was he
who initiated the animal studies. It is well-known that Gazzaniga and Sperry
fell out some time in the early 1970s; as a result, split-brain research was
itself split, with Gazzaniga setting up a program at Dartmouth on the east
coast, and Sperry and colleagues continuing their split-brain research at
Caltech on the west coast. Sperry died in 1994, and by that time had lost
interest in the split brain anyway, so Gazzaniga effectively took over the
# 2012 Michael C. Corballis
http://www.psypress.com/laterality http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1357650X.2012.690416
 BOOK REVIEW 385

fiefdom*although some of Sperry’s colleagues and former students,

including Eran and Dahlia Zaidel, continued to work with the west coast
patients. At the end of this book, though, Gazzaniga does acknowledge
Sperry as his mentor, suggesting that he was ‘‘perhaps the greatest brain
scientist who ever lived.’’ There seems to be an extraordinary ambivalence
here, and perhaps one day the full story of Sperry and Gazzaniga will be
told.
These events, though, are peripheral to this book, which is based on
Gazzaniga’s Gifford lectures, a series of lectures at the University of
Edinburgh given by distinguished scholars on matters of science, religion
Downloaded by [University of Auckland Library] at 14:05 17 May 2012

and philosophy. Gazzaniga’s main concerns here are free will and con-
sciousness, although cerebral asymmetry does feature. He finds the essence
of consciousness in his notion of a left-hemisphere ‘‘interpreter,’’ which
provides conscious accounts of behaviours that are actually elicited
unconsciously. The idea arose from split-brain work in which behaviour
directed by input to the nonverbal right brain is wrongly interpreted by the
left brain, which has no access to the original cause of the action. The more
general idea is that we cannot know the true reasons for our behaviour, but
the interpreter tells a plausible story that forms the basis of consciousness.
The true sources of behaviour lie hidden.
This idea has been around for a while in a different guise. The interpreter
is in essence a confabulator, and confabulation has long been known in a
variety of neurological contexts, as well as in social psychology. At one point
Gazzaniga recognizes the possibility of a right-brain interpreter that works
with spatial inputs, but later in the book this idea seems to be forgotten.
These interpreters are in effect the left and right brains personified.
Personification, though, is one of the blights of ideas about cerebral
asymmetry, and indeed of cognitive science; how often do we resort to
that little person lurking inside, whether in the pineal body, the frontal lobes,
or the left hemisphere? The problem remains as to how to interpret the
interpreters*the notional persons doing the interpreting.
Gazzaniga’s account, though, does suggest that there is no such thing as
free will. Behavior is governed by principles that are essentially mechanical,
buried in the intricacies of neural activity. But such are the intricacies,
further obscured by the fundamental uncertainties at the level of quantum
mechanics, that we will never be able to predict human behaviour with
accuracy, just as we cannot predict the weather with any degree of certainty.
Gazzaniga distinguishes between two levels of analysis*roughly, the neural
and the psychological. With respect to explanations of what people do, often
critical to legal proceedings, we are better to stick to psychological
concepts*perception, memory, motivation, attention, emotion*than to
appeal directly to brain function. ‘‘My brain made me do it’’ should not be
accepted as a legal defence in a court of law. In these respects, the book
 386 BOOK REVIEW

provides a sensible guide to the practical account of people’s actions and

responsibilities.
As one of his colleagues once remarked, Michael Gazzaniga is a big-
picture guy. He is also an excellent raconteur and host. This book is an
interesting ramble through a wide range of topics, from quantum physics to
hunter-gatherers, all somehow linked to questions about the mind. The style
is informal, occasionally hokey, but never dull. There are gaps. For example,
language is mentioned only peripherally, but is arguably the main
characteristic that distinguishes our species, and the provider of our personal
accounts of what we do. It is, I suppose, the essence of the left-hemisphere
Downloaded by [University of Auckland Library] at 14:05 17 May 2012

interpreter, and the medium of this very book. We still need to know more
about it.
But in the meantime, this book gives us the enjoyable sense of sharing a
dinner conversation with Michael Gazzaniga, holding forth in his inimitable
style.

MICHAEL C. CORBALLIS
Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland,
New Zealand
m.corballis@auckland.ac.nz

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