Left-brain interpreter
The work of the left hemisphere that explains one's own actions and ties them into a single story. Michael Gazzaniga and Joseph LeDoux named it from observations of split-brain patients. It supplies a sensible reason even when it does not know the real one.
In the split-brain patient P.S., a chicken claw was shown to the left hemisphere and a snow scene to the right. Asked to choose related pictures, his right hand pointed to a chicken and his left hand to a snow shovel. Asked why, the left hemisphere, which had not seen the snow scene, answered that the shovel was needed to clean out the chicken shed[1].
In their 1978 book Gazzaniga and LeDoux called this work of the left hemisphere the interpreter[2]. It shows that the reasons people give aloud are not always the real reasons for what they did[1].
Related terms
- Split brainA brain whose corpus callosum and other connections between the halves have been cut, so that the right and left halves work separately. Animal studies in the 1950s and patient studies from 1962 showed that what one half saw or learned, the other did not know.