Listening to the Right-Side of Your Brain...

[Bill Wiltrack]

.








.............................







Don't light a match
October 18, 2011 by bgierke

Well, news from CERN has it that there are particles moving faster than the speed of light. Sounds like a big deal given E=MC2 and all of that. However, reading through the blogs, it seems that Einstein’s theory already allowed for neutrinos of the “Tachyonic” sort to exist always at faster than light.

Dang complicated though and they’d not theretofore been detected.Guess we’ll have to wait for review of the evidence to see what, if anything, new was discovered. But don’t you wonder where this stuff comes from in the first place though? Scientific insights I mean? Here’s what erstwhile Princeton psych prof Julian Jaynes had to say about it:

“The picture of a scientist sitting down with his problems and using conscious induction and deductions is as mythical as the unicorn. The greatest insights of mankind have come more mysteriously. The literature is full of insights which have simply come from nowhere.*” Said Einstein of his theory: “Suddenly the happiest thought of my life came to me." And, “Why is it that I get my best ideas in the morning while I’m shaving?”

Insights come when you stop thinking about the problem. For example, years ago friends and I were encamped upon a glacier dreaming of first ascents up in the Interior Ranges of British Columbia. A storm set in and held us down for days. One member of our party never left his tent and became more morose by the day. Seriously depressed after several.

“We’re gonna die,” he’d wail from inside his tent. The situation wasn’t pleasant, but wasn’t that serious either. Finally, I decided to stick my head in and try to assuage his fears only to be nearly overcome with horrible odor of freeze-dried frijoles begotten methane.

“Hey man,” I said to him in recoil, “get the hell out of there and breathe some fresh air before you get really sick. You got something muy bad goin’ on in there. Don’t light a match. Seriously.” He moaned a bit, I persisted, and soon he emerged.

Five minutes later he was smiling. Storm hadn’t broken, but his head was clear and he offered a few suggestions for elegant new routes of which no one had yet thought and which ended up years later with multiple stars in a guidebook. Same here. My best ideas always come shazam while breathing outside air.

+++++++++++++++

*From his Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind – to which I’ve previously and frequently referred.

**Gotta be honest. I came up with some of this while perusing two books that’ll I’ll shortly wrap and give as birthday gifts:

The Courage to Create by Rollo May and Confronting the Quantum Enigma by David J. Kreiter. And dang if, since I just bought them yesterday, I’m not going to have to go out and buy again for myself.











...............................















.

[Arising_uk]

Why not try using your whole brain for a change Bill and stop repeating this idea as its philosophically suspect.

As I've pointed out to you, neurologists have retried Jaynes experiments and found that the processing he identified goes on in both hemispheres.

Your picture is to simplistic, just look at the categories themselves! What is 'holistic thought' when its at home?

At best its a useful metaphor for the philosophically hard of thought. But there are better models, NLP or De Bono's for example, that provide much more useful techniques for those who wish to improve their thinking abilities.

[Omniscientone]

As I've pointed out to you, neurologists have retried Jaynes experiments and found that the processing he identified goes on in both hemispheres.

I'm not arguing with you, but got a link or source?

[Bernard]

I couldn't find the video of an interesting doc I once saw on right/left brain in animals but found the transcript, of which I've quoted a portion below..

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1139554.htm

Leslie Rogers:
Well it used to be thought that only humans have lateralised brains. And this was related to our superiority over other species, and in particular our tool use our higher abilities for intelligence and so on and our ability to speak.

Narration:
As an animal behaviourist, Leslie had a problem with that. So to find out if animals had lateralised brains, she took young chicks, and looked deeply into their eyes.

Because the eyes are a window on the brain.

Well the thing about the eyes of a bird being placed sideways in the head is that almost all the information from say this left eye is being processed by the right side of the brain and the right eye by the left side of the brain.

Narration:
By covering up each eye in turn, remarkably, Leslie discovered chicks use the left side of their brain to find food.

They use the right side of the brain to respond to predators.

There you go. There it goes. It sort of crouched down.

It was irrefutable proof humans weren’t the only ones with lateralised brains.

Jonica Newby, reporter:
How did you feel?

Leslie Rogers:
Oh it was very exciting. Very elated. I like exploding myths as they say.

More importantly, Leslie had discovered something fundamental about the way brains are organised.

Across the animal kingdom, the left brain processes complex tasks, like collecting food. It’s the side of the brain that gets animals out and doing things.

The right brain deals with threats, like predators. It’s the defensive side.

Leslie Rogers:
It’s almost like you’ve got two different computers. One that can handle one computer, one another and the end result is that you can do many more things at the same time.

Leslie then began to wonder – if left and right brain are programmed so differently, can one side of the brain dominate an individuals behaviour?

Was there such a thing as a left or right brained personality?

It meant going up an order of complexity. Meet Leslie’s marmosets.

Leslie Rogers:
They’re gorgeous, aren’t they.

Narration:
This time, Leslie was able to tell which side of the brain was dominant by looking at which hand they used.

Like the eyes, the hands are controlled by the opposite side of the brain.

Jonica Newby, reporter:
Are most of them right handed?

Leslie Rogers:
No, half are left, and half are right.

[Arising_uk]

I'm not arguing with you, but got a link or source?

Shit! My apologies, I didn't save the link I found when goggling this issue.

It was a web-page by a neuro-scientist involved with brain imaging technologies who, apparently, claimed that he and his colleges had repeated Jaynes experiments and found that with the more advanced technologies the results were different. I accept that such things are not definitive as sources are hard to confirm but it seemed fairly authoritative and honest. My take is simply that whilst an interesting metaphor its not actually that useful when providing others with tools for thought and the way its being used now-a-days is to simplistic given the proposed mental categories that are being assigned to these hemispheres, e.g. 'holistic thought' and 'creativity', etc, as these appear fairly undefined terms in themselves.

[Omniscientone]

ah ok cool

[Bill Wiltrack]

.

Googled it for ya;


Bicameralism
Cognitive Science
Julian Jaynes
Neuroimaging
Neuropsychology
Neuroscience
Edit


Could current neuroscience support Julian Jaynes's thesis that consciousness evolved from the breakdown of a bicamerally-functioning mind?


Edit
Jaynes asserted that consciousness in the strictest sense the creation of an inner I-world based in metaphors of the outer world did not come into being until the end of the 2d millennium BCE. Formerly, "the gods" spoke from the right hemisphere of the brain through auditory hallucinations, giving direction in any moment of indecision or stress. Some have indicated that current brain-imaging technology is offering proof Jaynes's theory.



You're welcome...

.

[Bill Wiltrack]

.





Julian Jaynes
by Keith Purtell March 23, 1998





It doesn’t matter whether or not the scientific community accepted the ideas in “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.” Constructing new dogma is not the goal of a good scientific treatise. Presenting new models and theories about our world is. Presenting supporting rationale and evidence is even better.



Jaynes turned archaeological sociology on its head when he proposed his stunning new explanation for the rise and fall of ancient cultures. Based on exhaustive research in multiple disciplines, Jaynes’ concept was that ancient cultures were centered around religious practice that included actually hearing the voices of their gods, which Jaynes asserts originated in their own brains. The premise was grounded in bedrock brain research, but it startled many readers.



“The Origin of Consciousness ...” is a far-ranging journey through human history. Jaynes is a patient old guide whose careful, rational voice coaxes the student through every turn of the road. The search for understanding rolls across centuries, past landmarks both physical and intangible. Like any good investigator, Jaynes is obsessed with the trail of evidence. It really takes the entire book for the theory to become clear, but his cogent monologue grows increasingly convincing with each page. By the end of this book, Jaynes’ chugging logic has become a diesel locomotive. This must have been the farthest thing from catechism Jaynes’ peers could have expected in 1976.








......................................................


Even if the auditory hallucination theory is rejected, Jaynes’ general concept about the growth and collapse of ancient cultures still holds together. Students of history know chaos is usually closer than cultures realize, because civilization is based on a complex web of shared agreements about how we will behave toward each other. In an ancient society built entirely on religious agreement, a rupture of faith would be, as Jaynes pointed out, a calamity.



.....................................................



There were apt comparisons with Sigmund Freud when this book came out. However, one major difference between Jaynes and Freud is that Freud’s work had more impact when it was publicized. Why? Science has changed. Where scientific dogma was once brittle, it now carries the bureaucratic inertia of thousands of scientists interconnected in a complex network. Novel ideas are likely to be suffocated under a mass of entrenched attitudes.* The efforts of an iconoclast are similar to one lonely person trying to change the course of an international corporation. Among the less intransigent, however, “The Origin of Consciousness” stirred excitement.





.......................................................................






..........................................................................................................................

...................................................................................................Real-time neuron firing within a fish brain.






.