Nineteenth-century ideas on hemisphere differences and “duality of mind”

Abstract It is widely felt that the sorts of ideas current in modern laterality and split-brain research are largely without precedent in the behavioral and brain sciences. This paper not only challenges that view, but makes a first attempt to define the relevance of older concepts and data to present research programs. In the 19th century, there was a body of literature that held that many mental pathologies could be explained by supposing that each individual potentially had two conscious brains. Madness resulted when these begin to interfere with each other or otherwise functioned independently. The left-sided localization of language by Broca in the 1860s complicated matters by showing that the two brain halves functioned differently. Broca argued that functional asymmetry was a reflection of man's capacity to “perfect” himself; soon, the left hemisphere was transformed into the superior, uniquely human side of the brain. Considerable effort then went into seeing how far the functions of the right hemisphere complemented those of the left. The resulting dichotomies of mind and brain interacted—and sometimes also conflicted—with “duality of mind” theories. In the 1880s, the Paris school of neurology helped bring about a revival of interest in these theories with its startling metalloscopy and hemihypnosis experiments. A section of this target article is devoted to the views of Hughlings Jackson. Jackson's physiological/philosophical writings on hemisphere specialization and mental duality largely set him outside of the rest of the 19th-century tradition. The article concludes that at least some of the data gathered in the 19th century might prove useful or interesting to certain investigators today. More important, it asks how far an awareness of the “time-bound” nature of 19th-century concepts should change the way in which one surveys the laterality scene today.