Bagpuss said "but any idea that talks of seperate bits of the brain which do not communicate well with eachother is pretty outmoded. I have never heard of any serious neuropsychology work that talks about big brain and little brain in this way."

On the contrary - some of it is very new.   The images I recently saw, that show big brain processing language as two sets of patterns, are less than two years old.   When a word is heard, a pattern of brain activity occurs in one part of the brain.   When the same word is spoken, an identical pattern occurs in a different part of the brain.   These patterns, and that they are a matched pair, take place in areas that have no direct links to the part of the brain that processes language.

It is only in the last three years has it become almost universally accepted by the medical profession that deja vu occurs when Little Brain drops the memory of arriving at a new place, and Big Brain has already stored the image from the arrival.    (Rather like the way that you are sometimes not able to remember what topic is under discussion: similar sort of skip, similar sort of reason, different outcome).

So you are right in a way, Bagpuss, that the theorising circa 1985-1990 largely went away through lack of empirical evidence to support the views hypothosised back then.   But new research has given those old horses a new lease of life.

And if you have ever heard anyone say that religious experiences may possibly be caused by a third sort of brain skip - I really, really would like to know the source.

Regards

BE2