Tales From Both Sides of the Brain

More than 50 years ago, Michael S. Gazzaniga was in the middle of the most important observation in all of neuroscience—the now foundational theory that the right and left hemispheres of the brain can act independently from one another and have different strengths. Hailed “the father of cognitive neuroscience,” Gazzaniga’s work is renowned for its wit and accessibility, as well as its scientific elegance, and has inspired some of the most important minds in the field including Steven Pinker, Oliver Sacks, and V.S. Ramachandran.

Dr. Gazzaniga is currently the director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the president of the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute, the founding director of the MacArthur Foundation’s Law and Neuroscience Project, and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences.