Something interesting I happened to be reading yesterday that I thought was very relevant to this thread...
Excerpts from Jill Bolte Taylor - My Stroke of Insight (neuro-anatomyst):
...It is important to understand that hemispheric dominance is not to be confused with hand dominance. Dominance in the brain is determined by which hemisphere houses the ability to create and understand verbal language. Although the statistics vary depending upon whom you ask, virtually everyone who is right-handed (more than85% of the US population) is left hemisphere dominant...more than 60% of left-handed people are also classified as left hemisphere dominant.
Right Hemisphere
...functions like a parallel processor. Independent streams of information simultaneously burst into our brain via each of our sensory systems. Moment by moment, our right mind creates a master collage of what this moment in time looks like, sounds like, tastes like, smells like, and feels like...Thanks to the skills of our right mind, we are capable of remembering isolated moments with uncanny clarity and accuracy...our right hemisphere is designed to remember things as they relate to one another. Borders between specific entities are softened, and complex mental collages can be recalled in their entirety as combinations of images, kinesthetics, and physiology...no time exists other than the present moment, and each moment is vibrant sensation...Life or death occurs in the present moment. The experience of joy happens in the present moment. Our right mind is free to think intuitively outside the box...It perceives the big picture, how everything is related and how we all join together to make up the whole. Our ability to be empathic, to walk in the shoes of another and feel their feelings, is a product of our right frontal cortex.
By its design, our right mind is spontaneous, carefree, and imaginative. It allows our artistic juices to flow free without inhibition or judgement...the present moment is a time when everything and everyone are connected together as one.
Left Hemisphere
...It takes each of those rich and complex moments...and strings them together in timely succession. It then sequentially compares the details making up the last moment. By organizing details in a linear and methodical configuration, our left brain manifests the concept of time whereby our moments are divided into past, present, and future...I look at my shoes and socks and it is my left hemisphere that comprehends that I must put my socks on before my shoes. It can look at all the details of a puzzle and use the clues of color, shape, and size to recognize patterns for arrangement. It builds an understanding of everything using deductive reasoning...our left mind thrives on details, details, and more details about those details. Our left hemisphere uses words to describe, define, categorize, and communicate about everything. They break the big picture perception of the present moment into manageable and comparable bits of data that they can talk about.
Via our left hemisphere language centers, our mind speaks to us constantly, a phenomenon I refer to as "brain chatter"...one of the jobs of the left hemisphere language centers is to define our self by saying "I am". Through the use of brain chatter your brain repeats over and over again the details of your life so you can remember them. It is the home of your ego center, which provides you with an internal awareness of what your name is, what your credentials are, and where you live...our left hemisphere thinks in patterned responses to incoming stimulation...it is superb at predicting what we will think, how we will act, or what we will feel in the future-based upon our past experience...our left hemisphere categorizes information into hierarchies, including things that attract and repel us...Through the action of critical judgement and analysis, our left brain constantly compares us to everyone else.
Dominant Communication
With language, for example, our left hemisphere understands the details making up the structure and semantics of the sentence - and the meaning of the words. It is our left mind that understands what letters are and how they fit together to create a sound (word) that has concept (meaning) attached to it. It then strings words together in a linear fashion to create sentences and paragraphs capable of conveying very complex messages.
Our right hemisphere complements the action of our left hemisphere language centre by interpreting non-verbal communication. Our right mind evaluates the more subtle cues of the language, including tone of voice, facial expression, and body language. Our right hemisphere looks at the big picture of communication and assesses the congruity of the overall expression. Any inconsistencies between how someone holds their body, versus their facial expression, versus their tone of voice, versus the message they are communication, might indicate either a neurological abnormality in how someone expresses himself or it may prove to be a telltale sign that the person is not telling the truth.
Some of us have nurtured both of our characters and are really good at utilizing the skills and personalities of both sides of our brain, allowing them to support, influence, and temper one another as we live our lives. Others of us, however, are quite unilateral in our thinking - either exhibiting extremely rigid thinking patterns that are analytically critical (extreme left brain), or we seldom connect to a common reality and spend most of our time "with our head in the clouds" (extremem right brain). Creating a healthy balance between our two characters enables us the ability to remain cognitively flexible enough to welcome change(right), and yet remain concrete enough to stay a path (left).
roud:
