The left hemisphere filters experience into an abstract representation, while the right sees things without preconceptions
- The left hemisphere sees an post-processed of the world, while the right sees things without preconceptions
- The left hemisphere sees the world through a conceptual representation, while the right sees things without preconceptions
For some purposes, those that involve making use of the world and manipulating it for our benefit, we need, in fact, to be quite selective about what we see. In other words we might need to know what is of use to us—but this might be very different from understanding in a broader sense, and certainly might require the default mode network to filter out some aspects of experience. But without experiencing whatever it really is, we would have nothing on which to ground our knowledge, so we have to experience it raw at some stage; but in order to know it, we have to ‘process’ experience. We have to be able to recognize (‘re-cognize’) what we experience: to say this is a ‘such-and-such’, that is, it has certain qualities that enable me to place it in a category of things that I have experienced before and about which I have certain beliefs and feelings. Novelty is handled by the right hemisphere, and is transferred to the left hemisphere as it becomes familiar. This processing eventually becomes so automatic that we do not so much experience the world as we experience only our representation of the world. And thus, we generally struggle to examine and criticize our own neural programs. The world is no longer ‘present’ to us, but ‘re-presented’, a virtual world, a copy that exists in conceptual form in the mind.
Much of our capacity to ‘use’ the world depends, not on an attempt to open ourselves as much as possible to apprehending whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves, but instead on apprehending whatever we have brought into being for ourself, our representation of it. This is the remit of left hemisphere. The left hemisphere is concerned with utility and the mechanical. Also, the left hemisphere prioritizes things that it already knows and expects, and our left hemisphere unconsciously focuses on only a select few of the sensory signals it receives that it considers important. This would appear to require a selective, highly focussed attention. The right hemisphere has broad, global, and flexible attention, while the left has narrow attention. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, is ‘on the look out’. It has to be open to whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves, as much as possible without preconceptions, not just focusing on what it already knows, or is interested in. This requires a mode of attention that is broader and more flexible than that of the left hemisphere.
References
- Mcgilchrist, Iain. (2010). The Master and His Emissary Chapter 2 What Do the Hemispheres Do (80). London, UK: Yale University Press.
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Type:🔵 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Neuropsychology Status:☀️