Blogged using the power of my own massive brain to control these meaty sausage things to interface with the world.
As usual, this is an oversimplified view of things, and one that probably doesn’t draw on actual neurological research. How can I postulate (bing! $15 word) this? Guy is a speech writer, not a neuroscientist. He has a BA in… something? Probably english or philosophy. How can I guess that? He’s got a law degree from some fancy place, and you usually lead into that with english or philosophy. And, of course, the neuroscientist writing this article says, “You can in fact find lots of books about one side of the brain or the other. But they are mostly by people who don’t work on the brain.” For those of you interested in both music and books written by actual neuroscientist musicians, check out www.yourbrainonmusic.com, a very enlightening look at what goes on in our grey goo while we make or listen to music. Fun fact: want to use more parts of your brain at once than a neurosurgeon or rocket scientist? Make music!
So where did all this left-right brain junk come from, anyway? Good thing I’m just re-treading a blog by an actual neuroscientist and don’t have to do 5 minutes of lazy googling wikipedia for an answer:
Left-Right talk in the popular media dates back to the 60s and was mostly stimulated by research on split-brain patients, patients in whom the left and right sides are literally separated. In these people, the left and right hemispheres cannot communicate. In most of us though, the two sides are closely interconnected and work together in creating our mental and behavioral capacities. Attributing functions to one side or the other just divides the “black box” in two. This kind of over-simplification is unnecessary given all we’ve learned about how the brain works.
If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that our knowledge of things is incomplete at best, erroneous at worst (and deliberately erroneous at evillest). I’m sure that if one side of your brain goes out and you have to spend time reconnecting the two, yeah, sure you may be better at some things than others. It’s like having half of your Windows installation missing (Yeah, I know, it can barely run with the whole thing there I’m just makin a bad metaphor) – some of your computer will work, but not all of it, and you may conclude then that this half of Windows is the only part responsible for operating these parts of your computer – and you’d be right, because that’s the way computational devices are made – specific things control very specific functions and there is no redundancy or self-repair able to happen. Because we made it that way. And the way we make things shapes the way we think about our world. Like you can take off the top half of your car but still have a running vehicle. So it makes sense then, that without further information, our thinking would be necessarily clouded by the way we view the world. In the 50 years that have passed since 1960, our computing power and thus our degree of information acquisition specificity has exponentially increased. So now, the thinking is more along these lines:
Proponents of Left-Brain Right-Brain ideas would probably say that I’m focusing on the wrong thing — that they are talking about much more global aspects of brain function, the overall function of the right side or left side. I would respond that there is no overall function of a side. Areas, whether on a small or large scale, don’t have functions. Functions are products of systems. Systems are made up of cells that are interconnected by synapses. Systems span the brain vertically and horizontally — they are not isolated in one hemisphere.
And thus we see that it is not the cauliflower-like macrostructure of the brain responsible for much of anything besides lookin pretty funky and expanding the surface area these cells have to live on – the more cells and interconnects, the more systems and the more information that can be processed through simultaneously – but it is ultimately the way these cells talk to one another that determines how your brain functions.
And before anyone tries to bring up any hoo-ha about this neuroscientist just trying to poo-poo on a good party:
I actually did my PhD studying split-brain patients, working with the guy who has studied more of these patients than anyone else in the world — Mike Gazzaniga.
He goes on to mention that just because something happens on the right or left side of a brain, doesn’t mean that it’s a function of the hemisphere, just that the collection of cells happens to be preferentially located in that area. But, as brain-trauma victims have shown us, the brain is very plastic and can heal itself or have other areas take over, albeit at diminished capacity (hey, it hasn’t had a lifetime to learn, give it a break). He says that Pink, the author of the book in question, is probably just using the socially known but still erroneous thinking of left/right brain dichotomies to say that we have overemphasized logic and problem solving while leaving empathy and creativity lagging behind – some of the things that have made our societies so grand – you can build a skyscraper with logic alone, but you can’t make it beautiful that way. And beauty is definitely a prime mover in human society (money is the most prime mover, at least in today’s world).
And hey, you know what else is funny? The neuroscientist writing this article is also in a band. And isn’t the same neuroscientist/musician as the guy who wrote This is Your Brain on Music. Who knew so many neuroscientists played music. I guess after they learn how much of your brain lights up during playing they can’t resist. And if this hasn’t been enough to get you to real the whole article by this guy, a few more choice quotes that oughta make you tear the article apart and then look for his books. To wit:
And I’ve participated in conferences that explore the implications of brain research for important social goals, like peace, prosperity and ethics.
For example, a few years ago, I was invited to a conference on the political uses and abuses of fear. The keynote was to be given by Al Gore… The VP had heard that researchers like me had made a lot of progress in uncovering how fear works at a very detailed level in the brain and he wanted to know if there were some lessons from the neuroscience of fear that might be helpful in his discussion of the politics of fear.
And thus you begin to understand exactly why Al Gore was so feared and fought so utterly ruthlessly during the 2000 election. He is an actual Good Man, or at least is a bad man extremely dedicated to appearing good (really effin hard to say with politicians). I mean, listen to this:
He [Gore] absorbed the details and gave an insightful lecture on the politics of fear that included a good deal of information from brain research.
Which is just another reason Gore wasn’t well-liked by our country. He actually listens and thinks, instead of spitting out action-movie one-liners.
There’s a whole lot more in this article by Joseph LeDoux, I think I covered the most interesting parts but I encourage you to read fully.
Knowledge, i.e. the cellular interconnects in your brain, is power. The pen has conquered the world in ways the sword could never have dreamt. But the brain, the brain produced both, and knowledge is the only thing that can free you from conquest.
Tags: i, music, nerd with a capital N, tweets, wild speculation, yes this is really how I amuse myself