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Biomedical subjects

K D Hoppe

Publications and source records attributed to K D Hoppe.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1988

Hemispheric specialization and creativity.

The results of an experimental study on commissurotomy (split-brain) patients and normal control subjects illuminate the difference in creativity. The surgical disconnection of transcallosal interhemispheric exchange and of any access or communication between the two hemispheres creates in commissurotomy patients an outstanding lack of creativity which could be demonstrated on a lexical, sentential, global, affective, and EEG-analysis level. In contrast to split-brain or alexithymic people, expressive-creative persons verbalized their presentational symbolization and imagery of the right hemisphere which was transformed via corpus callosum to the left hemisphere, called symbollexia. Thus, creativity can be understood as the opposite of alexithymia. The hypothetical concept of creativity as hemispheric bisociation was supported by EEG findings, suggesting an inhibition and lack of inner speech between the two language centers in alexithymic people versus a higher interhemispheric coherence level in expressive-creative persons. Further on, the difference of expressed feelings of anxiety and hostility suggests a restrictive set of rules and of early superego components in commissurotomy patients in contrast to expressive-creative people who empathically experience and verbalize their anxiety about death and are open to the experience of their being in the world as an act of creation. Finally, the vignette of a creative patient whose left hemisphere was overflooded by affects and imagery, expressed in her pictures, illuminates the importance of a balanced transcallosal symbollexia and hemispheric bi-sociation in psychotherapy.

Affective Symptoms↗
PubMed1988

Alexithymia and the split brain: VI. Electroencephalographic correlates of alexithymia.

Electroencephalographic recordings of eight corpus callosotomy patients and eight precision-matched control subjects were obtained as subjects watched a film symbolically depicting death. A content-analytic measure of alexithymia was regressed on eight auto-spectral alpha-band intensity averages and on subsets of alpha-band coherence averages. Results were interpreted on the basis of three possible mechanisms of alexithymia: (1) Alexithymic subjects had more right-temporal alpha-band intensity, suggesting inadequate understanding of the film. (2) A possible lack of inner speech in alexithymics was suggested by their relative alpha abundance of the left frontal and left temporal channels but left parietal alpha desynchronization, and by their lower left frontotemporal but higher left parietofrontal and left parietotemporal coherences. (3) Alexithymic subjects had higher right frontal-left parietal and left frontal-left parietal coherences, suggesting possible interhemispheric inhibition of expression. Expressive subjects had higher right frontal-left temporal (and homologous interhemispheric frontal, parietal, and frontal) coherences, suggesting interhemispheric facilitation of verbal expression.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Alexithymia and the split brain. III. Global-level content analysis of fantasy and symbolization.

8 commissurotomy patients and 8 precision-matched normal control subjects were shown a 3-min videotaped film about death. Content analysis of the subjects' spoken and written responses to this film was carried out on the global, interpretive level, for 2 fantasy and 4 symbolization variables. Commissurotomy patients were found to be significantly more alexithymic than normal controls for 3 of the symbolization variables, for factor-analytic measures of fantasy and symbolization, and for an over-all measure of alexithymia derived from these 2 factors and lexical-level and sentential-level measures of alexithymia.

Affective Symptoms↗
PubMed1977

Split brains and psychoanalysis.

Modern neuro- and psychophysiological findings on commissurotomized ("split-brain") patients seem to confirm psychoanalytic theories. Twelve commissurotomized patients and one patient who had a right hemispherectomy showed an impoverishment of dreams, fantasies and symbolization. This might have been due to an interruption of the preconscious stream between the two hemispheres, which causes a separation of word-presentations from thing-presentations, as well as to a predominance of a feedback-free primary process in the right hemisphere. The similarity in operational thinking of psychosomatic and split-brain patients leads the author to hypothesize a "functional commissurotomy" in cases of severe psychosomatic disturbances.

Adult↗