Our Double Hemisphered Brain

When I first began teaching, I encountered Betty Edward’s book, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.”  She speaks of the right and left hemispheres of the brain and  their characteristics and roles. The left, according to her, is verbal, analytical, judgmental and linear and the right is creative, nonverbal, perceptual and spatial. Our double hemisphered brain is often in conflict with itself!

Iian McGilchrist wrote a book in 2009, called the Master and his Emissary. It is based on a comprehensive body of research and discusses how our left and right hemispheres have their own “take” on the world . He states that both hemispheres are involved in language and creativity, in different ways.

  • The right experiences the world through the senses and hands over those experiences to the left for an evaluation. 
  • It is able to integrate perceptual processes with information from the other senses and process them rapidly.
  • The left, whose job is to analyse that information, refers back to itself, dealing most comfortably with what it knows and the world it has made for itself.
  • It breaks incoming information into parts, creating systems and categories and re -presents them in the form of the internal monologue. It is fascinated with mechanics and tools.
  • The right has a global attention, seeing the whole picture i.e. it is holistic, capable of stepping back and looking beyond the interests of self.
  • When engaged in the right, we are able to empathise and value community and nature.
  • The left’s attention is local and is dictated by the internal logic of situations at the cost of the whole experience, its main concern is utility and what it has made. It is aloof from nature, viewing it as a resource to be used.
  • It breaks incoming information into parts, creating systems and categories and re -presents them in the form of the internal monologue. It is fascinated with mechanics and tools.
  • The right processes and is connected to everything outside the self, whilst the left is concerned with itself.
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