The left hemisphere sees things abstracted, isolated, and stripped of context🧠
The right hemisphere sees the whole first, and then the left hemisphere separates it into parts, and It follows that the left hemisphere is also the hemisphere of abstraction, which, as the word itself tells us, is the process of wresting things from their context. This, and its related capacity to categorize things once they have been abstracted (The right hemisphere recognizes and groups things by comparing them with an exemplar whereas the left recognizes things by categories), are the foundations of its intellectual power.
In one study, a patient with left hemisphere damage, therefore relying on his right hemisphere only, on being asked to copy a model using pieces of wood appeared as if “compelled by some bizarre force” “to place the pieces of wood on top of the model that intended of them to copy, rather than to one side’. This was thought to signify a problem with the ability to produce an abstract representation from a concrete model. The left hemisphere can only re-present; but the right hemisphere, for its part, can only give again what ‘presents’.
Another patient had lost the power of expression in speech, but retained some automatic understanding of the names of objects, which was presumed to be mediated by their right hemisphere. Although they could instantly pick up a brick on command, they could have no memory of the word brick.
References
- Mcgilchrist, Iain. (2010). The Master and His Emissary Chapter 2 What Do the Hemispheres Do (96). London, UK: Yale University Press.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Neuropsychology Status:☀️