In 1981, Roger W. Sperry of the California Institute of Technology was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries concerning the functional specialization of the cerebral hemispheres.

Both human and animal brains have two halves with somewhat different functions. One way Roger Sperry studied these functions was by examining patients whose hemisphere-connecting nerves had been severed to alleviate serious epilepsy. By the 1960s, Sperry could reveal that the left hemisphere is more geared toward abstract and analytical thought, calculation, and linguistic ability, while the right hemisphere is more important for comprehending spatial patterns and complex sounds like music.