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| Category: Continuing Education |
Date published: April 25, 2007 |
Does Your Left & Right Brain Control Your Behaviors?
Remember back when people thought the world was flat, and planet Earth was the center of the universe? How about Descartes and Dualism saying the brain was totally separate from the body? Wait. Ulcers are psychologically caused?
In 1981 Roger W. Sperry of Cal Tech received the Nobel for his thirty-years of research in Split-Brain theory of left and right hemispheric specialization. Hold it.
Bribe
Read on and you will learn some important knowledge about influence and persuasion if you stay awake. If you can recognize how to influence other folks, you win the game of success. Will accept our bribe?
When we ask for a show of hands, about left-brain, right brain, 98% of the class confirms a general knowledge. We have been asking questions about left-brain, right brain for the last ten years, and have never received a negative response. Students and executives believe people are dominantly left or right brained.
Profound Facts
The scientific community did not accept the concept of two separate brains in our cerebral cortex ever after Sperry received the Nobel. In a nutshell Sperry said, after early development, circuits of our brain are largely hardwired. He was mostly right, except for later evidence for neuroplasticity and neurogenesis.
Sperry said: Each hemisphere is indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, willing and emoting??? Both may be conscious simultaneously in different, even mutually conflicting mental experiences that run along in parallel.
Many scientists before and after Sperry believe the brain operates mechanically, and consciousness, reasoning and free will are irrelevant to science. Sperry disagreed and argued free will and responsibility is real and not an illusion. He believed ideas run our brain, not chemical events.
Last point. Sperry believed the brain is separate from the mind, but they exist in a unified continuum to shape our behaviors. Split-brain research shows the whole world of subjective (inner) experience, long ignored and despised by science, is in fact a core element of human existence.
Scientific Research Today
The journal, Current Biology March 20, 2007, published an article by G. Vallortigara et al., University of Trieste in Italy validating the original research on left-brain, right brain. And it is fun to know too.
Emotional Asymmetry in The Brain
Here is what is important for non-science-geeks. Your left-brain is responsible for positive emotions, that means on the right side of your body, and you right brain controls the negative emotions which appear on the left side of your body.
You noticed the switcheroo, the left-brain controls the right half of your body and vice-versa. It is caused by a nervous system chiasma (crossing over) of circuitry.
It applies to humans, and the rest of the vertebral creatures.
This means your left-brain (right side of your face) shows love, a sense of attachment, and our feelings of security, protection and relaxation. In fact your heart slows down when your left-brain is activated.
For science buffs, your left-brain activates your Parasympathetic Nervous System and the neurotransmitter, acetylcholine causing relaxation and digestion.
Your right brain is the father of Fight-or-Flight, adrenaline (epinephrine) and your Sympathetic Nervous System. Fear and depression often result from fear and the necessity to withdraw (flee). It causes a rapid heartbeat and an inhibition of your digestive system.
Muscles
Now hear this K-Mart Shoppers: your facial muscles on the right side (left-brain), indicate joy, happiness, love and an absence of stress. Now guess what your left-sided facial muscles (right-brain) evidence?
Right. Unhappiness, depression, fear, anxiety and chronic stress.
You are the best and the brightest because you are still reading, so how would you use this left-brain, right brain knowledge to influence and persuade others?
Watch the appropriate side of the face to gage their reactions and level of involvement with your requests.
Dogs
I have no idea why this knowledge is important unless you are a veterinarian, but when a pooch wags her tail harder to the right, they trust and love you bunches.
Wag it to the left, you make them nervous and they are thinking aggressive thoughts. It is left-brain, right brain again. The cause is emotional asymmetry (different measurements) in each brain.
Evolution
There is a holistic (Big-Picture) involved in this left and right brain specialization. Creatures, including Homo sapiens, who can multi-task two functions simultaneously, have an evolutional advantage of survival.
If you can both chomp on your prey, and watch for predators who want you for their next meal, you have survival value to benefit your progeny. If you do not make, there are no progeny. One more benefit of split-brain specialization. No duplication of function and waste of neuronal circuits.
Endwords
So now you know when your collie loves you for your worthiness and supply of morsels, or wants to bite your fundament. People do not have tails to identify their true emotions, but keep checking the left and right sides of their face.
See ya,
copyright 2007
H. Bernard Wechsler
www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org
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