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hypnagogue
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If you're so skeptical of this result, why did you accept the old view?Royce said:As to the right/left issue, I don't know, I only know what I read and see. I do think it rather difficult to believe that a "simple brain scan" can tell whats actually going on, activity yes, linear analysis or conceptual thinking, I don't think so.
Did you read the article? We deduce what the brain does not by simply scanning it, but by scanning it while subjects perform some cognitive tasks. So we can see what portions of the brain are more active for detail oriented tasks and which are more active for broader conceptual tasks. The pattern that appears to be emerging is that local, detailed tasks are handled more by the left hemisphere and broader, global tasks are handled more by the right hemisphere. However, this division of labor is more about processing styles than actual tasks. For instance, language is processed in both the left and right hemispheres, but the left specializes with low-level details like grammar and word choice, while the right analyzes things like intonation and emphasis of words.