Mar 27 2008
The myth of left brain superiority
Elizabeth A. Phelps of Yale University, Janet Metcalfe of Columbia University and Margaret Funnell, a postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth College, have found that the two hemispheres differ in their ability to process new data. When presented with new information, people usually remember much of what they experience. When questioned, they also usually claim to remember things that were not truly part of the experience. If split-brain patients are given such tests, the left hemisphere generates many false reports. But the right brain does not; it provides a much more veridical account.” (Gazzaniga, 1998: 54).
Alright so in my last blog post I had some things to say about a neuroanatomist’s interpretation of her trauma induced “right brain experience.” What happened basically was a stroke shut down “something’ in the left hemisphere. This “shut down” subsequently opened the scientist up to a rather dramatically different way of looking at things. The variation from the “normal” experience of the scientist was striking and while she went on and on in effusive terms about the “glory” of the experience, I suggested that it was inappropriate to view her experience as anything other than as a kind of “awakening inner child” experience. After years of left brain dominance and right atrophy, suddenly the censors were turned off and the “child” (the higher processing facilities of the right brain) where exposed to reality with obvious and predictable results, i.e., childlike apprehension of reality and childlike affect
Now in my previous blog post, and in fact in the first person account of “right brain exposure,” there was a lot of discussion about right brain lateralization and I would like to explore that topic a bit more in subsequent blog posts. However, before we get into that I want to share a neuropsychological experiment with you. This was an experiment on brain lateralization. In this experiment researchers took two groups of individuals. Some had a transected corpus callosum (i.e., that part of the brain that connects the right and left hemisphere) and the other group were “intact normals.” (i.e., intact corpus callosum). The experimental participants were exposed to a learning learning test. This test involved a simple task visual task. Two lights were presented on a computer screen, one above the other, and the subjects were to guess which light was going to come on next, either the top or the bottom. (Wolford, 2000) .
Now in this experiment the lights were to appear randomly on the computer screen, but the top light was to appear 80% of the time while the bottom light would only come on 20% of the time. There was no other pattern to the display of lights other than this random, and rather obvious, pattern of distribution. And it was obvious! In fact, the pattern was so obvious that all subjects in the experiment quickly figured it out. That is, all subjects quickly realized that the top light was coming on a lot more frequently than the bottom line.
So what happened?
Well, the conditions were, guess correctly and so that’s what the subjects tried to do. As it turns out, intact controls (intact corpus callosum) and subjects where the stimuli was to the left brain only, performed with an average 68% accuracy.
Not bad I suppose.
Slightly better than random guessing and the left brain could be forgiven, if it weren’t for the dramatically superior performance of the right brain in this task. Contrary to the rather dismal performance of the linguistic, analytic, left brain, the right brain attained a spectacular 80% correct.
WOW!
How did it do that?
Well of course this is pure speculation but if you were to ask me I would say that the right brain, more closely connected to the Fabric of Consciousness than the left brain, and full of insight into the nature of the situation, quickly learned that the best strategy to maximize correct responses (the condition set by the experimenter) was to simply push the top button all the time. By choosing this seemingly “simple” strategy, the right brain guaranteed itself an 80% on the experimenter’s binary exam. Pretty amazing when you think about it.
And why the poor performance of the poor left brain?
Ah well that’s the rub, isn’t it.
The researchers explained it by suggesting that the left brain “distributes its responses between the two alternatives…despite the fact that this is a suboptimal strategy.” (Roser and Gazzaniga, 2004: 58. emphasis added).
And why does the left brain distribute its responses in this way?
Well I would say that it’s because, despite all the analytic, linguistic, and logical grandeur of the left hemisphere, the left brain, which is modularized for certain types of tasks, lacks basic insight. It tends to get lost in the details of things, turned around in circles, “looking for order and reason, even when there is none–which leads it continually to make mistakes. It tends to overgeneralize, frequently constructing a potential past as opposed to a true one.” (Gazzaniga, 1998: 54). In other words it’s good at some things, but incredibly dumb at other things.
This can be a bit of a problem for people who have become convinced that the left brain’s logical and rational capacities are recent evolutionary adaptations that signal an emergence of human rational superiority. This is classical thinking and it underlies a lot of the neurological thinking on lateralization. The idea that human rationality and logic, i.e., left brain functionality is the sine qua non of evolutionary advance is generally accepted. Experimenters would agree. Roser and Gazzaniga (2004) take the poor performance of the left hemisphere to be evidence of the “hypothesis-generating” nature of the left hemisphere. To me, it’s a strange conclusion. How one can conclude that the left hemisphere is all about the generation of hypothesis while faced with the clear failure of the left hemisphere to generate an adequate hypothesis!
And it was a simple task!
Yet, despite the simplistic nature of the task, the left brain just doodled along in confusion while the right slammed down a home run. What’s worse I think is that to bolster the idea that the left brain is good at thinking, researchers go on to dismiss the abilities of the right brain comparing it to rat thinking and suggesting that the right hemisphere “…does not try to interpret its experience and find deeper meaning. It continues to live only in the thin moment of the present–and to be correct 80 percent of the time.”(Gazzaniga, 1998: 54).
Hmm.
If you ask me, that’s a confabulation.
It’s the scientists left brain talking. The left brain, the one that controls the mouth, is looking at a task that it is inferior at and suggesting an interpretation that maintains the illusion of its superiority.
Confabulation.
It is an established neurological fact!
Whenever neurological subjects are exposed to some kind of deficit, they confabulate. “…when asked to explain why it is attempting to figure the whole sequence, [it] always comes up with a theory, no matter how outlandish”(Gazzaniga, 1998: 54).
It’s true!
So what does all this have to do with our discussion of the spiritual experience of the right brain. First of all, while I wouldn’t want to dis the left brain completely here, I would want to point out that the idea that the left brain’s linguistic, categorizing, “hypothesis generating” rationality is in any way superior to the right brain is incorrect. We have a clear and rather stunning example of left brain incompetence. It is reasonable to question whether or not the right brain is indeed inferior in any way to the left hemisphere, especially in the simplistic way that our neuro-scientist presented in her analysis. The right brain obviously has some smarts and these have to be taken into account.
Second, the research and commentary here really highlights the inadequacy of Dr. B’s account. You might be forgiven if, after hearing Dr. B. effusive account, you think the right is nothing but a “LA LA” space for Nirvanic Junkies. But that wouldn’t be true. The right brain has many functions which are important not only to survival on this earth, but also (as we will see) to the full expression of Spirit (a.k.a. consciousness) in matter. Something that isn’t even intimated in the original account.
I believe I want to explore this for a while. Next time I would like to take a look at the neurological truths of brain lateralization. I know the mythology of lateralization. It’s a recent evolutionary advance that put humans “one step ahead” of their animal cousin. It’s the left brain that’s important and nothing much has been lost in our rampage towards the modern world. But what’s the truth of lateralization (mystical or scientific) and how to do we understand “the brain” in relation to the ontological primacy spirit. From there we’ll move on to discuss the function of the brain and CNS in relation to the “la la” lands of Spirit.
Until then,
ms
References
Gazzaniga, Michael S. (1998). The Split Brain Revisited. Scientific American. 279(Jul98): 50-56.
Metcalfe, Janet., Funnell, Margaret, and Gazzaniga, Michael S. Right-hemisphere Memory Superiority: Studies of a Split-brain Patient. Psychological Science. 6(3): 157-164.
Phelps E.,. and Gazzaniga, M.S. (1992). Hemispheric Differences in Mnemonic Processing. The Effects of Hemisphere Interpretation. Neuropsychologia. 30: 293-297.
Pinet, John P. (2007). Basics of Biopsychology. New York: Pearson.
Roser, Mathew and Gazzinga, Michael S. (2004). Automatic Brains–Interpretive Minds. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 13(2): 56-59
Wolford, G., Miller, M.B., Gazzaniga, M. (2000). The Left Hemisphere’s role in Hypothesis Formation. Journal of Neuroscience 20, RC64.
