The left hemisphere prioritizes things that it already knows and expects🧠
Since novelty is handled by the right hemisphere, and is transferred to the left hemisphere as it becomes familiar, then only the right hemisphere can bring us something other than what we already know. But the left hemisphere deals with what it knows, and therefore prioritizes the expected—its process is predictive, and it is responsible for predictive coding. It positively prefers what it knows. This makes it more efficient in routine situations where things are predictable, but less efficient than the right wherever the initial assumptions have to be revised, or when there is a need to distinguish old information from new material that may be consistent with it. Because the left hemisphere is drawn by its expectations, the right hemisphere outperforms the left whenever prediction is difficult.
References
- Mcgilchrist, Iain. (2010). The Master and His Emissary Chapter 2 What Do the Hemispheres Do (85). London, UK: Yale University Press.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Neuropsychology Status:☀️