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Author
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Topic: Differences Between Left and Right Hemisphere
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listenstotrees
Knowflake Posts: 1612
From: Rivendell
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted November 15, 2010 01:52 AM
 
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~studskl/hd/hemis.html One way of looking at learning styles is to determine your hemispheric dominance. Are you more right brained or left brained? We know that the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that houses rational functions. It is divided into two hemispheres connected by a thick band of nerve fibers (the corpus callosum) which sends messages back and forth between the hemispheres. And while brain research confirms that both sides of the brain are involved in nearly every human activity, we do know that the left side of the brain is the seat of language and processes in a logical and sequential order. The right side is more visual and processes intuitively, holistically, and randomly. Most people seem to have a dominant side. A key word is that our dominance is a preference, not an absolute. When learning is new, difficult, or stressful we PREFER to learn in a certain way. It seems that our brain goes on autopilot to the preferred side. And while nothing is entirely isolated on one side of the brain or the other, the characteristics commonly attributed to each side of the brain serve as an appropriate guide for ways of learning things more efficiently and ways of reinforcing learning. Just as it was more important for our purposes to determine that memory is stored in many parts of the brain rather than learn the exact lobe for each part, likewise it is not so much that we are biologically right brain or left brain dominant, but that we are more comfortable with the learning strategies characteristics of one over the other. What you are doing is lengthening your list of strategies for learning how to learn and trying to determine what works best for you. You can and must use and develop both sides of the brain. But because the seat of our preferences probably has more neural connections, learning may occur faster. This section will look a t some differences between left and right brain preferences. Be on the look out for practical strategies that work for you.
Let's begin with a few basics. First, no one is totally left-brained or totally right-brained. Just as you have a dominant hand, dominant eye, and even a dominant foot, you probably have a dominant side of the brain. Second, you can and must develop both sides of your brain. Click on the link to an inventory which helps you determine the balance of your hemispheres. Hemispheric Dominance Inventory http://frank.mtsu.edu/~studskl/hd/hemispheric_dominance.html ------------------
An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
~Orlando A. Battista. IP: Logged |
NickiG
Knowflake Posts: 1115
From: Pluto, next to Ami Ann
Registered: Jul 2010
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posted November 15, 2010 03:36 AM
i dont know if its true if whether or not left handed people can use both of their brains, but i can say that i do use both hemispheres, but i use the left a little more than the right with a few exceptions (yes, i'm left handed)------------------
the better the chase, the better the reward IP: Logged |
mochai
Knowflake Posts: 39
From:
Registered: Sep 2010
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posted November 15, 2010 08:07 AM
This is going to sound arrogant, but I've studied neuroscience to death for very personal reasons, and I don't entirely agree with mtsu's approach on this. We are all naturaly more right brained as children and then become more left brained as adults as we form our patterns and perceptions. Be it, we all have our own experiences that shape our biases, but they tend to follow that line. For starters, they offer art and music to children is they know it makes them more intelligent. Music is a little more whole brained, and art being more right brained. Both rely on making far more connections and the right brain tends to be highly integrated wheras the left brain is more singular process oriented, if this than that. In combining neuroscience with education, they found that speaking of something in a non-concrete way actually promoted learning and retention of material. To the extreme this was best expressed, was describing factual events as things that seemed to be. For example, children learned best when told Abraham Lincoln seems to have been the president of the United States during the Civil War or that our constitution seems to have cemented our government into existance, or that x lends itself to y. This is called mindful learning. The very act of keeping something loose and non-concrete allows someone to create more neural connections between one thing to another, thus allowing the person to learn or experience it better. This ties into buddhism as well, in experiencing the bare essence of reality without perception or preconceived filters (left brained approach) you can actually perceive the whole stimulus with a much more complete picture, creating more neural flexibility. Daniel Siegel of the UCLA mindfulness institute calls this kind of bare awareness ipseity. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that learning styles originate more in the right brain and become processes of the left moreso. Thus why we can learn a lot when our right brains are more dominant as children, and why we're so bad at it as it atrophies into old age. It's been a year and a half since I was obsessive about modern findings in neuroscience, so I could have forgotten some things. Anyway.. keep things open  . The world is always changing!Edit: There is more to this.. but kundalini needs me to shut down before it makes me do so fully. Sorry I didn't describe it better. I would say any left brain learning is just antiquated learning styles originating from a foundation laid by right brained learning. It's just very procedural/filtered. IP: Logged | |
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