34—two principal findings emerged. First, the left and right hemispheres of the brain display a high degree of functional specialization. This discovery was not entirely new, because it had been known for at least a century that damage to the left hemisphere could impair the use of language. But the split-brain procedure allowed scientists to test each hemisphere independently on a variety of tasks, revealing a range of segregated abilities. The second finding was that when the forebrain commissures are cut, the hemispheres display an altogether astonishing functional independence, including
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