The divided brain

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant but has forgotten the gift. ~Albert Einstein

I have written before about the brain and its workings in Practical implications of the biology of creativity, and even more relevantly to the video below in The story of reason in which I attempted to demolish the general consensus on left and right brain thinking. Along comes the inestimable Ian McGilchrist, psychiatrist and author of the book, The Master and his emissary. The 11 minute video is so chock full of tasty goodness it is difficult to know where to begin or end.

Following is a smattering of quotes from the video:

Split-brain conceptions were incorrect

The division of the brain… enjoyed a sort of popularity in the 60s and 70s after the first split-brain operations and it led to a sort of popularization which as since been proven to be entirely false. It is not true that one part of the brain does reason and the other does emotion. Both are profoundly involved in both.

Like I said in The Story of Reason, I strongly suspected that when I was quite young. What I did not mention in the article is that as I wrestled with expert opinion it was one of the moments that helped me understand that my opinions had merit and I could give them voice; it helped me overcome my shyness. And there was that time when my mathematics teacher tried to convince the class that ‘x’ in the quadratic equation was a ‘semi-variable,’ sometimes a variable and sometimes a constant…but I digress.

The divided brain has grown even more pronounced over the generations…so that the ratio of the corpus callosum to the volume of the the hemispheres has got smaller. And the plot thickens when you realize that one of the main, if not the main function of the corpus callosum is to inhibit the other hemisphere.

So something is going on which brain separation or specialization supports. And the brain is decidedly not symmetrical.

Focus and broad synthesis

One way to think about hemispherical purpose is focus; the left for a narrow, prioritized focus and the right for a broader more general vigilance.

The big thing about humans are their frontal lobes… which inhibit the rest of the brain, to stop the immediate from happening, standing back in time and space from the immediacy of experience… which gives us the ability to both plan and empathize.

What may get lost in the idea of planning is deferment or investment if you will. For emotional intelligence predicts life success. It allows us to build which gives us productivity and wealth, and gives us the patience to develop new thoughts and communicate them, even against the immediate pressure to procreate and otherwise carry on.

So the left hemisphere yields clarity and the power to manipulate those things that are decontextualized, fixed, isolated and static… The right hemisphere by contracts yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, incarnate, living beings in the context of the lived world.

Culture now favors the focused left hemisphere

McGilchrist makes the point that western culture has emphatically allowed the left hemisphere to dominate our culture, resulting in more control, less freedom, more information yet less wisdom, and an ever decreasing amount of innovation which offsets our increased knowledge.

He says a great deal more, and a fascinating and interesting video it is. The animation alone is spectacular.

Hat tip Nicholas Carr in Minds askew

The Master and His Emissary Publisher: Yale University Press by Iain McGilchrist