The Left and Right Sides of the Brain :: Health Medicine

The Left and Right Sides of the Brain Your brain has two sides. And each has a distinctly different way of looking at the world. Do you realize that in order for you to read this article, the two sides of your brain must do completely different things? The more we integrate those two sides, the more integrated we become as people. Integration not only increases our ability to solve problems more creatively, but to control physical maladies such as epilepsy and migranes, replace certain damaged brain functions and even learn to "thin" into the future. Even more startling is evidence coming to light that we have become a left-brain culture. Your brain's right and left side have distinctly different ways of looking at the world. Your two hemispheres are as different from each other as, oh, Micheal Wilson and Shirley Maclean. The left brain controls the right side of the body (this is reversed in about half of the 15 percent of the population that is left-handed) and, in essence, is logical analytical, judgemental and verbal. It's interested in the bottom line, in being efficent. The right brain controls the left side of the body and leans more to the creative, the intuitive. It is concerned more with the visual and emotional side of life. Most people, if they thought about it, would identify more with their left brain. In fact, many of us think we are our left brains. All of that non-stop verbalization that goes on in our heads is the dominant left brain talking to itself. Our culture- particularly our school system with its emphasis on the three Rs (decidedly left-brain territory) - effectively represses the intuitive and artistic right brain. If you don't believe it, see how far you get at the office with the right brain activity of daydreaming. As you read, your left-side is sensibly making connections and analysing the meaning of the words, the syntax and other complex relation- ships while putting it into a "language" you can understand. Meanwhile, the right side is providing emotional and even humerous cues, decoding visual information and maintaining an integrated story structure. While all of this is going on, the two sides are constantly communicating with each other across a connecting fibre tract called the