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Underground > Laboratory >

Left brain/right brain division.

11:39 / 11.06.03

A comment in another thread led me to begin this discussion on the division between left brain and right brain thinking. The theory goes that left-handed people use more of their right brain - which is the emotive, creative side of the brain, and that right-handed people use more of the left brain - the mathematical, logical side.

Apparently, the two sides of the brain work like this:

Left Brain
Logical
Sequential
Rational
Analytical
Objective
Looks at parts

Right Brain
Random
Intuitive
Holistic
Synthesizing
Subjective
Looks at wholes

I am inclined to support this theory - I am left handed and completely unmathematical, when I try to understand things like physics or maths I feel like my brain just shuts down, and I just don't get it. I'm very bad at analysing things, and I have problems with logical thinking. However, I am very artistic, intuitive and emotive, which are right sided traits.

Our education system and ways of learning tend to favour left brain functions, which, if you buy into the theory leaves the left handed amongst us at a disadvantage.

One interesting experiment which appears to help prove the idea of the two sides of the brain is to take a left handed and a right handed person, and get them both to copy a graphical picture turned upside down. The right handed person will draw a really good copy of the image, whereas the left handed person's copy will not be nearly as accurate, even if they are usually good at drawing. It is suggested that the reason for this is the right handed person automatically swaps to the the right side of the brain (the creative side) by drawing upside down, whereas the left hander swaps to the left, (the more mathamatical, logical side.)

So I wondered, what do people think about the left brain/right brain divide, and in particular in relation to handedness? And is this post a good example of my right brained lack of scientific and logical thinking?!

12:34 / 11.06.03

I heard that the hemispherical specialisation had been disproved, but I have yet to be convinced- I think it's true. 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' convinced me, and I was taught it in my Psych degree so I'd be intrigued if anyone knows anything about the disproving.

Relatedly, the corpus callosum (the bridge between the two hemispheres) is more active in some people than others, indicating a greater communication between the two sides of the brain.

Interestingly, one cure for severe temporal lobe epilepsy involves cutting the corpus callosum. Psychologists love experimenting with those sort of people, so of course they tested the hell out of them. They put a vertical screen up between the eyes, so one eye sees one side and one the other, and showed them objects. If the object was on their left, so their left eye and thus right brain could see it, they could not name or describe the object, but could draw it with their left hand. If the object was on their right they could name and describe it but not draw it. Weird, eh?

12:39 / 11.06.03

You left handers are sinister and should be made dextrous

13:38 / 11.06.03

I think that the corpus callosum experiment was my favourite at uni. I remember that these subjects could hold an object in one hand, and know what it was - yet not actually be able to name it unless they felt it with the hand that connected to the language centres (sorry I forget which side of the brain does which). That is far out!

I think you explained all this already, but I love the fact that you knew that too and thought of it straight away. Sorry ragdoll - this is of no help to you at all.

13:58 / 11.06.03

Here's what Scientific American says:

Overall, creativity is a whole brain process. The brain is an electrochemical organ that works on the basis of neural activity that occurs in the cortex; it is well demonstrated that "thinking" takes place exclusively within the cortex. There are four main structures in the brain with a "thinking like" cortex. Two of them are the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. The other two are the left half of the limbic system and the right half of the limbic system.

...A model can be constructed that displays the four thinking structures in four quadrants (illustration below). This Whole Brain Model depicts the four structures as viewed from the back of the head. Building on this model, it is also possible to develop two other related models that define the Four Selves and the Creative Self. The Four Selves model describes the thinking characteristics of an individual in every day situations, and the Creative Self model describes them when that same individual is acting creatively.

FOUR QUADRANTS define not only the left brain (A, B) and right brain (C, D) modes but also the cerebral (A, D) and limbic (B, C) modes.

...From a left brain/right brain perspective, the creative process can be diagnosed as follows: Interest (left and right), preparation (left), incubation (right), illumination (right), verification (left) application (left and right). It is a balanced process--four "lefts" and four "rights."

Over the many years that I've worked with this whole brain concept, I've become aware of significant male/female differences in mental processing preferences and competencies. Several are particularly relevant to creativity. It's clear that although both genders have left mode and right mode specialties, they are very different. To take advantage of these differences, it is highly desirable to have a balance of males and females on any creative team.

22:06 / 11.06.03

I'm under the impression that the different specializations of the hemispheres are factual, but that breaking actual people into lefties and righties is a DRASTIC oversimplification. Olulabelle's first post follows the rules of syntax, after all; her left brain seems to be working fine.

Supposedly the right brain enjoys wholes, and the left prefers sequence; so which side would enjoy a good poem? Both, obviously, for different reasons. I'm inclined to think that good art (and science, for that matter) is that which has the big picture gestalt and the details working at the same time.

This isn't to say that the education system doesn't favor left-style, analytical teaching--it does. But I think it's more in the presentation than the information (which is why I think that you could learn math perfectly well if you felt like it, olulabelle, with the right sort of teacher). On the tests which measure these sorts of things I'm supposedly "integrated" between global and analytical processing, which is presumably why I enjoy math, but I have to draw weird pictures and scribble a lot before I can wrangle things into something formal.

(Semi-aside: Anyone done any mind-mapping? It's a form of note-taking that seems to maximize hemisphere interaction... I'm obsessed with it these days.)

13:03 / 12.06.03

Tangent Warning...

People who are good at maths, people who are good at art etc. - it's a lie.
A study of creativity showed that children define themselves as stereotypically 'Arty' or 'Sciency' and perform accordingly. When asked to roleplay a child who was the other stereotype, children attained similar scores. So the 'sciency' children were repressing their creativity to conform to their stereotyped role, which the 'arty' children then did when they were roleplaying.

(Detail- the creativity test was 'how many uses can you think of for a brick?' scored on number of responses and originality of response- a crude measure but sufficient. The children were tested, then asked to pretend to be (e.g.) Johnny, a boy who likes to paint and draw, who plays music and doesn't like maths and science. The arty children were given a similarly simple science geek stereotype to pretend to be, then the kids were tested again.
The arty kids and the science kids pretending to be arty scored significantly higher than the science kids and the arty kids pretending to be sciency.)

Now here's the kick- after about age twelve, the science kids scored lower even when they were pretending to be arty- they had 'fossilised' into their role and could not escape it. Equally, the arty kids didn't score much lower when they were pretending to be sciency.

So the moral is 1)Don't let your children define themselves as bad at one or the other thing and 2)You're only bad at maths/science/art because you believe you are.

(aside- mindmapping like spider diagrams? My friend did it the other day in a meeting instead of sequential minutes, it matches conversational structure much more closely, and reflects your thought processes more accurately. I'm all for it)

21:49 / 12.06.03

That'd be it... you take a central image and radiate outwards by association rather than sequence, using colors and images and dimension and whatever else you see fit. I take notes during debates that way--because of the structural advantages you mention, but it also freaks out opponents.

It's a fantastic method of generating and organizing ideas (your own and others'). I highly recommend The Mind Map Book by Tony Buzan if you're interested.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

16:01 / 20.06.03

This is purely anecdotal, of course, but in every group of engineering types I've ever encountered there's been a preponderance of left-handed guys. I'm of an engineering/scientific bent myself and I'm a total southpaw.

I was very disturbed by the arty-kid, geeky-kid experiment described by Quantum. It struck me as terribly sad, the image of little children already limiting themselves to one stereotypical, cartoon-character role or another.

09:09 / 25.06.03

Dude, me too- no child of mine will be limited to those stereotypes, I'll make them act out all the characters of the breakfast club as children

In fact that was what caused me to start the 'No such thing as talent' thread, to let people know this stuff for when they have kids. But I seem to have bitten off more than I can chew there...

18:18 / 28.06.03

Not that quite simple for left eye/right eye division as each eye is split into two as regards nerve impulses, left hand side of both left and right eye reports to right hand side of brain and vice versa, hence movement towards research which favours exposure to stimulus for too short a period for saccadic eye movement to take place.

Also, after a bit of marial arts brought my left hand drastically into play, I'm still no better at drawing...but that's a bit flippant.

18:52 / 28.06.03

And just for the anecdotal record, I am powerfully right handed, and pants at maths and logic, but quite good at philosophy and english, my online personage (and job) to the contarary...

21:24 / 02.07.03

Anyone ever read "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess" by Leonard Shlain? He talks about how he thinks that when cultures go too far to teh left-brain way of things, misogny goes on the rise. You may believe teh theory or not, but he writes well and show a lot of insight into history that you might not have gotten in school.

Plsu, have you ever noticed that some artists tend to use a left-brain approach to make their art and how many scientists seemd so right-brained, ie like Einstein?

19:34 / 08.07.03

Just ran into this article through artkrush.com about how visual and musical creativity emerges (typical right-brain activity) as the language centers decay and die (typical left-brain activity).

Thought it might be an interesting addition to this discussion. As a practitioner of yoga it made me think about the purpose of sense-deprivation, silence and calming of the (rational) mind. Perhaps meditation is a process that puts to rest the linguistic rational part of the brain and in turn awakens the creative intuitive part? These are probably not any big news for anyone who has dabbled a little bit with yoga or buddhist meditation but at least there could be some scientific backing now.

trouser the trouserian

10:15 / 09.07.03

Aaah, the old split-brain theory.
I recall from my psychology degree reading a lot of critiques of the original so-called 'split-brain' experiments. One criticism was that the hemispherical specialisation model was drawn from a very small sample, none of whom could really be considered 'typical' - i.e. they were on medication, and some of them had had previous neurological surgery - hardly representative of the general population. Of course, mere scientists criticising each other doesn't get in the way of popular ideas - especially if it seems to fit personal beliefs (an apposite example might be that whole "Gay Brains" theory, which has been adopted by the American Right.)
I rather like the Whole Brain model presented in SA - it's similar to another model that is known as psychoneural monism - where 'consciousness' arises out of total brain activity.
One thing I would say from my experience of working with people who've suffered neurological damage - strokes or head injuries (I did a couple of stints in a Neurological assessment unit) is that it's often very difficult to generalise about brain function. I recall 2 clients in particular who'd had a an anyeurism in the same hemisphere (can't remember if it was r or l tho'). One had significant motor dysfunction but had more or less full speech, whilst the other had no motor loss at all, but couldn't speak or recognise objects (but eventually made a full recovery). Granted this was some years ago and I haven't really kept up with the advances in the field.

It'd be interesting to find out if anyone is doing either CAT or PET brain scanning research in terms of validating the split-brain theory.

02:37 / 15.07.03

The whole two-brain thing is too simple, something that I like is thing called "True Colors." I ran into it in my education classes in college. I will try to find a good link. It breaks people up into four personality traits, which can be subdivided or overlap a bit. Their are also some similarities to the right/left brain stuff as well. Interesting stuff, but I do not know about the brain activity for the different color types.

In my experience as an educator and a student this is some pretty good and accurate stuff.

07:36 / 15.07.03

I've been trying to launch sigils (namely by wanking) using the left hand (even though I'm right-handed), the logic being that the more intuitive parts of the brain are being exercised and focused on. While the outcome of my sigils haven't really shown themselves, I've been surprised at the ability of ol' lefty to do the job we call hand just as well. Anyone else try this, notice a difference in effect, or is this merely giggleworthy?