[JC] Finally had time to sit down and glance through the article you posted. I can't believe you think it supports the idea that left-brainedness and right-brainedness, are not distinctive.
[Arlo previously] ... in reality these don't map to the categories you're still stuck in (Pirsig's pre-solution classical/romantic schism). [Arlo] I'm sorry, John, as I said it was pop article that just covered the fact that the distinction you had proposed (right brain = romantic/dynamic, left brain = classic/static) really does not hold up. "Maybe you're "right-brained": creative, artistic, an open-minded thinker who perceives things in subjective terms.Or perhaps you're more of a "left-brained" person, where you're analytical, good at tasks that require attention to detail, and more logically minded. It turns out, though, that this idea of "brained-ness" might be more of a figure of speech than anything, as researchers have found that these personality traits may not have anything to do with which side of the brain you use more." ARE there distinctions? The researchers found that "Language tends to be on the left, attention more on the right.". Let's go on to the study in question and see what they say. "In popular reports, “left-brained” and “right-brained” have become terms associated with both personality traits and cognitive strategies, with a “left-brained” individual or cognitive style typically associated with a logical, methodical approach and “right-brained” with a more creative, fluid, and intuitive approach. Based on the brain regions we identified as hubs in the broader left-dominant and right-dominant connectivity networks, a more consistent schema might include left-dominant connections associated with language and perception of internal stimuli, and right-dominant connections associated with attention to external stimuli. Yet our analyses suggest that an individual brain is not “left-brained” or “right-brained” as a global property, but that asymmetric lateralization is a property of individual nodes or local subnetworks, and that different aspects of the left-dominant network and right-dominant network may show relatively greater or lesser lateralization within an individual." http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0071275 So, first, the intent here is to show that your proposed mapping of left/right to classic/romantic is not accurate and has no theoretical or pragmatic value. If you want to get into a more neurological discussion about the structural and functional role of lateralization (and I'd suggest branching out into studies at neuroplasticity before cementing a bio-reductionist position), there are far better forums for that exploration. [JC] In other words, the empirical behavior we observe, doesn't map totally to the biological brain. Ok, very interesting. But that doesn't mean there is not a difference between the two sides of the brain. [Arlo] In the pop article, one of the researches said, "Language tends to be on the left, attention more on the right. But people don’t tend to have a stronger left- or right-sided brain network. It seems to be determined more connection by connection." In the empirical article, the authors conclude: "Despite the need for further study of the relationship between behavior and lateralized connectivity, we demonstrate that left- and right-lateralized networks are homogeneously stronger among a constellation of hubs in the left and right hemispheres, but that such connections do not result in a subject-specific global brain lateralization difference that favors one network over the other (i.e. left-brained or right-brained). Rather, lateralized brain networks appear to show local correlation across subjects with only weak changes from childhood into early adulthood and very small if any differences with gender." Note that the lateraization hub preferences found are not varied among individuals, language tends to activate left-lateralized networks in both you and me and everyone else. The author suggest that this is a result of both structure and function. To fully appreciate 'why' this is, or what this means, as I said you'd need to branch out into neuroplasticity studies to see how, say, language-related neural hubs are impacted by damage to the left-hemisphere (a cursory glace reveals that while the brain has difficulty overcoming catastrophic injury, minor injuries often led to these hubs simply being 'relocated' to other areas of the brain, even cross-hemisphere). Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
