A friend just sent this article from the Guardian:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2013\/nov\/16\/left-right-brain-distinction-myth<\/p>\n
I’m quite grateful for this, as the whole question of left-right hemisphere differences was supposed to have been thoroughly refuted in the 90s (most popularly by Jerre Levy). \u00a0On our website (www.remember-to-breathe.org) which uses Dan Siegel’s interpersonal neurobiology as the basis for understanding the brain, we have a page on left-right brain differences. \u00a0This article states quite well the mistaken ideas about these differences. \u00a0But the view in the article is not what Seigel is talking about.<\/p>\n
The left-right brain distinction that Dan Siegel uses for his “interpersonal neurobiology” and Iain McGilchrist eloquently describes in his “Master and His Emissary” is very different from the pop version. As I wrote to my friend:
\n“Yes, we go to great pains on our website to say that the left-right brain pop psychology critiqued in this article is not what McGilchrist is talking about. he spent 20 years – 1990 to 2010 – studying the literature and even Ramachandran as well as other world-class neuroscientists agree with him. \u00a0The simplest way to put it is we use our whole brain all the time (which means that old canard about using only 10% of our brain is nonsense).<\/p>\n
McGilchrist refers to “left mode” and “right mode” thinking rather than left brain or right brain, just because of this “whole brain” use. \u00a0But in fact, even though our whole brain is active all the time, many discrete kinds of mental functioning activate specific areas of the brain more than others. \u00a0It is in fact true, to give just one example, that focused, objective attention activates areas of the left prefrontal cortex more than the right, and wide, diffuse, immersed attention activates areas of the right. ”<\/p>\n
*****<\/p>\n
Actually, Siegel uses another brain model, what he calls the “tripartite brain”, which is often confused with another popular but outdated model, Paul McLean’s “Triune brain.” I can’t go into the details here (it’s widely available on the web) but McLean had ideas about the evolution of the brain which have been shown to be fundamentally incorrect. \u00a0The way Siegel (and McGilchrist and in fact many other contemporary neuroscientists) refer to the tripartite brain has superseded the old incorrect evolutionary notions. For more, see “Brain Anatomy for Dummies’ on our website.<\/p>\n
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A friend just sent this article from the Guardian: http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2013\/nov\/16\/left-right-brain-distinction-myth I’m quite grateful for this, as the whole question of left-right hemisphere differences was supposed to have been thoroughly refuted in the 90s (most popularly by Jerre Levy). \u00a0On our website (www.remember-to-breathe.org) which uses Dan Siegel’s interpersonal neurobiology as the basis for understanding the brain, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":379,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions\/379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}