Switching Off Half The Brain

There is a clinical test named the Wada test, in which doctors keep a patient awake while they inject a short-acting anesthetic into one internal carotid artery to temporarily inactivate one brain hemisphere. That one-sided shutdown lets the team test language and memory while the other hemisphere stays functional, helping them map which side supports speech and which side carries critical memory skills. After the drug wears off in minutes, they repeat the process on the other side to compare performance across hemispheres.

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