TED Video: Iain McGilchrist: The Divided Brain

[rhody]

Interesting http://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgil..._campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email"".

'A marvellous and highly original synthesis of ideas on how the division of labour between the two brain hemispheres can provide key insights into human nature - it's odd that such an important subject has been neglected.'

--- Professor VS Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, and head of the Neurosciences Graduate Program at the University of California, San Diego, author of The Tell-Tale Brain, and Phantoms in the Brain

Rhody...

 

[Pythagorean]

I enjoyed that, thank you

 

[rhody]

I enjoyed that, thank you

Hey,

Did you find anything controversial that he said, especially toward the end of the video ?

Rhody...

 

[Pythagorean]

Well, he kind of went back to the false imagination/rationale duality in the end, but this is a cartoon, not a peer-reviewed journal. It's role is to give one a general idea and stimulate interest.

 

[rhody]

Well, he kind of went back to the false imagination/rationale duality in the end, but this is a cartoon, not a peer-reviewed journal. It's role is to give one a general idea and stimulate interest.

Thanks, I picked up on that too...

Rhody...

 

[apeiron]

Hey, Did you find anything controversial that he said, especially toward the end of the video ?
Rhody...

Snazzy animation. But yes, he goes from an emotion/logic divide to an intuition/reason divide by the end. So one divided brain replaced by a not much different divided brain.

The trick is to instead frame the description of the difference in a way that it is clearly complementary - two aspects of processing that combine to produce the balanced whole.

So think of the left/right brain story as being about figure and ground, part and whole, focus and context. The left brain zooms into isolate the detail and the right brain steps back to take in the panorama. Every moment of understanding is some combination of this local/global analysis.

And the brain is in fact organised by a whole bunch of processing dichotomies - sensory~motor, attention~habit, what~where, endogenous~exogenous, plasticity~stability, etc. Things always divide into two and then work together. Differentiate so as to be able to integrate.

 

[rhody]

Differentiate so as to be able to integrate.

aperion,

You have a gift of being able to express things in juxtaposition. Sometimes you remind me of Murray Gell-Mann. Are you a linguist as well ?

Rhody...

 

[DevilsAvocado]

Interesting http://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgil..._campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email" (in RSA Animate) on the differences between and commonalities of the right, left hemisphere's of the human brain.

Thanks rhody, nice video, it deserves to be embedded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI&hd=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI

I was unaware that the brain is according to McGilchrist asymmetrical between the left and right hemisphere's among other things.

I don’t know if the work of Michael Gazzaniga and Roger Sperry on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain" [Broken] is now 'obsolete', but according to this video it seems difficult to refute completely:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv4K5aStdU

My 'feeling' is that there is (to some extent) plasticity and adaption in the brain (in case of injury for example), and that the "completeness of the network" is what counts (neurons firing in different parts of the brain). Maybe it’s a little hazardous to point out small separate areas in the brain as "this and that" function... but I could (of course) be wrong...

On the other hand, the video clearly shows that language is located in the left hemisphere.


P.S. Naturally I find it very interesting that, according to McGilchrist, the devil’s advocate is located in the right hemisphere.

 

[Pythagorean]

The vertebrate brain is definitely more functionally separated then the bundles of nerves that non-segmented creatures have. Its one of the great strides in evolution.