Essay/Term paper: Your brain

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Science

Your Brain


Your brain has two sides. And each has a distinctly different way of
looking at the world.

Do you realize that in order for you to read this article, the two sides
of your brain must do completely different things? The more we integrate those
two sides, the more integrated we become as people. Integration not only
increases our ability to solve problems more creatively, but to control physical
maladies such as epilepsy and migranes, replace certain damaged brain functions
and even learn to "thin" into the future. Even more startling is evidence
coming to light that we have become a left-brain culture.

Your brain's right and left side have distinctly different ways of
looking at the world. Your two hemispheres are as different from each other as,
oh, Micheal Wilson and Shirley Maclean. The left brain controls the right side
of the body (this is reversed in about half of the 15 percent of the population
that is left-handed) and, in essence, is logical analytical, judgemental and
verbal. It's interested in the bottom line, in being efficent. The right brain
controls the left side of the body and leans more to the creative, the intuitive.
It is concerned more with the visual and emotional side of life.

Most people, if they thought about it, would identify more with their
left brain. In fact, many of us think we are our left brains. All of that non-
stop verbalization that goes on in our heads is the dominant left brain talking
to itself. Our culture- particularly our school system with its emphasis on the
three Rs (decidedly left-brain territory) - effectively represses the intuitive
and artistic right brain. If you don't believe it, see how far you get at the
office with the right brain activity of daydreaming.

As you read, your left-side is sensibly making connections and analysing
the meaning of the words, the syntax and other complex relation-ships while
putting it into a "language" you can understand. Meanwhile, the right side is
providing emotional and even humerous cues, decoding visual information and
maintaining an integrated story structure.

While all of this is going on, the two sides are constantly
communicating with each other across a connecting fibre tract called the corpus
callosum. There is a certain amount of overlap but essentially the two
hemispheres of the brain are like two different personalities that working alone
would be somewhat lacking and overspecialized, but when functioning together
bring different strengths and areas of expertise to make an integrated whole.

"The primitive cave person probably lived solely in the right brain,"
says Eli Bay, president of Relaxation Response Inc., a Toronto organization that
teaches people how to relax. "As we gained more control over our environment we
became more left-brain oriented until it became dominant." To prove this, Bay
suggests: "Try going to your boss and saying "I've got a great hunch." Chances
are your boss will say, "Fine, get me the logic to back it up."

The most creative decision making and problem solving come about when
both sides bring their various skills to the table: the left brain analysing
issues, problems and barriers; the right brain generating fresh approaches; and
the left brain translating the into plans of action.

"In a time of vast change like the present, the intuitive side of the
brain operates so fast it can see what's coming," says Dr. Howard Eisenberg, a
medical doctor with a degree in psychology who has studied hemispheric
relationships. "The left brain is too slow, but the right can see around
corners."

Dr. Eisenberg thinks that the preoccupation with the plodding left brain
is one reason for the analysis paralysis he sees affecting world leaders. "Good
leaders don't lead by reading polls," he says. "They have vision and operate to
a certain extent by feel."

There are ways of correcting out cultural overbalance. Playing video
games, for example, automatically flips you over to the right brain Bay says.
"Any artistic endavour, like music or sculpture, will also do it."

In her best-selling book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (J.P.
Tarcher Inc., 1979), Dr. Betty Edwards developed a series of exercises designed
to help people tap into the right brain, to actually see or process visual
information, differently. She cites techniques that are as old as time, and
modern high-tech versions such as biofeedback.

An increasing number of medical professionals beieve that being in touch
with our brain, especially the right half, can help control medical problems.
For examplem Dr. Eisenberg uses what he calls "imaginal thinking" to control
everything from migranes to asthma, to high blood pressure. "We have found," he
says, "that by teaching someone to raise to raise their temperature - by imaging
they are sunbathing or in a warm bath - they can control their circulatory
system and terefore the migrane."

Knowledge of our two-sided brain began in the mid-1800's when French
neurologist Paul Broca discovered that injuries to the left side of the brain
resulted in the loss of speech. Damage to the right side, however did not.
Doctors speculated over what this meant. Was the brain schizophrenically
divided and non-communicative?

In the early 1960s, Nobel Prize winner Dr. Roger Sperry proved that
patients who had their corpus callosum severed to try and control epileptic
seizures could no longer communicate between their hemispheres. The struggle
can be seen quite clearly in the postoperative period whe the patient is asked
to do a simple block design. This is a visual, spacial task that the left-hand
(controlled by the right brain in most of us) can do very well but the right
hand (controlled by the language-oriented left brain) does poorly. The right
hand may even intervene to mix up the design.

Some people with epilepsy can control their seizures by concentrating
activity on the hemisphere that is not affected. In the case of left lobe
epilepsy, this can be done by engaging in a right-brain activity such as drawing.


One intriguing question is why we have two hemispheres at all? "In
biology you always have the same thing on one side as the other - ears, lungs,
eyes, kidneys, etc." explains Dr. Patricia De Feudis, director of psychology at
Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga, Ont. "But with the brain there is more
specialization. You can have something going on one side and not not be aware
of it in the other."

Our knowledge of the brain is general is only beginning. We know even
less about how the hemispheres operate, Getting in touch with how the two sides
work can only do us good, if just to keep us from walking around "half-brained".