List date(s) this work was published or aired.
14-Mar-12
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
Since the 1960s, researchers have been scrutinizing a handful of patients who underwent a radical kind of brain surgery in which the corpus collosum was severed to control severe epilespy. The cohort has been a boon to neuroscience, providing many new insights into the roles of the two halves of the brain. But with the surgery no longer necessary, and the research subjects aging, this source of information will soon be gone.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
The main source for “The Split Brain” was the research of Michael Gazzaniga, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, along with the findings of other neuroscientists.
Explain types of human sources used.
In addition to Michael Gazzaniga, sources included Richard Ivry, director of the Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley; David Roberts, head of neurosurgery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire; and split brain patients themselves.
Results:
This was a general interest rather than an investigative piece.
Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
No corrections were needed and there have been no challenges to this piece’s accuracy.
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
For a story of this type, my advice is to be patient. Wait for the story to germinate, stay with the source over time, keep going back for updates on the research. Eventually, the right angle will emerge. And that angle need not be announcement of a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal. In fact, better if it’s not.