Introduction

Analysis

Functional Connectivity of Half Brains

“Intrinsic Functional Connectivity of the Brain in Adults with a Single Cerebral Hemisphere” is a scholarly article that was written by Dorit Kliemann et al. The article was published on November 19, 2019, and is from the journal Cell Reports. The purpose of the article was to investigate the functional brain networks that make up the emotions, cognitive abilities, and behavior of full brain people, and study their extent in people who underwent surgical removal of a hemisphere in the brain. The article was well written because it included all of the components of IMRAD, the tense and voice used in the article were consistent throughout the article, and all of the information included in the article was necessary to help further understanding. 

The introduction starts off by framing the topic for the reader by providing contextual information. This included information such as how functional brain networks are typically studied and their importance. The introduction provided past studies and their significance. After presenting these past studies, it was made clear that there were some flaws in the studies, making the need for this study clear and distinguishing it from the previous ones. The active voice was used throughout this section of the paper, as shown by the usage of the word “we”. The past tense was also used in this part of the paper and that was seen when referring to the questions that the paper addressed, otherwise known as the hypothesis. The usage of the active voice and the past tense can be seen throughout the article. 

As opposed to the usual setup of the IMRAD, in this article, the results come after the introduction as opposed to the methods, making this paper a results paper. Meaning that the main focus of this experiment is the results rather than the methods. These types of papers are meant to be concise and to the point in order to get the data published as quickly as possible. The results provide the reader with a very thorough summary of the findings. The main ones being that the resting networks that were found in hemisphere brains were very similar to full brains. The only way in which they were dissimilar was because the hemisphere brains had much higher functional coupling than the full brains. The details of the findings were shown in the tables and figures that were explained thoroughly allowing the reader to follow along very easily. 

Following the results, was the discussion, which was written in the pyramid structure of general to specific similar to all of the other sections. The importance of the findings, as well as their implications, were made clear. The researchers mentioned the implications of future research, concluded that their hypothesis was supported by their results, and showed that it provided evidence of the abilities of a surgically modulated brain. The authors also provided the limitations of their work and potential sources of error. Most of the hedging verbs, as well as adverbs, were used in this portion of the article. This was done of course to show that even though the authors believed that their study was extremely significant and important, it does not prove anything since nothing can be proven in science. 

The last portion of this article was the methods portion and it was included as supplemental information that could only be accessed online. The major reasoning for this being that the paper was a results paper as opposed to a methods paper. The method portion itself was short and concise. It included information about the choice of subjects as well as the statistical analysis. Most of the information provided was on the subjects that had a single cerebral hemisphere because the atypical brain information came from a dataset. All of the information that would be needed to replicate this study was mentioned and thoroughly explained. In conclusion, the reference sheet of the article was properly formatted and included all of the sources mentioned in the article. 

References 

Dorit Kliemann, et al. “Intrinsic Functional Connectivity of the Brain in Adults with a Single Cerebral Hemisphere”. Cell Reports. N.p. November 19, 2019. Accessed on February 10, 2020.