The left hemisphere will confabulate explanations for things it doesn’t know and seems completely convinced of them
The left hemisphere of split-brain subjects has been shown to have to come up with random reasons for things the right hemisphere does. This may be linked to a phenomenon known as confabulation, where the brain, not being able to recall something, rather than admit to a gap in its understanding, makes up something plausible, that appears consistent, to fill it. Thus, for example, in the presence of a right hemisphere lesion, the brain loses the contextual information that would help it make sense of experience (The right hemisphere sees things in their context); the left hemisphere, nothing loath, makes up a story, and, lacking insight, appears completely convinced by it. Even in the absence of amnesia, the left hemisphere exhibits a strong tendency to confabulate: it thinks it knows something, recognizes something, which it doesn’t, a tendency that may be linked to its lack of ability to discriminate unique cases from the generalized categories into which it places them: The right hemisphere allows for the recognition of uniqueness and familiarity, while the left only re-presents generic categories of things.
The left hemisphere is the equivalent of the sort of person who, when asked for directions, prefers to make something up rather than admit to not knowing. This impression is confirmed by Panksepp: ‘The linguistically proficient left hemisphere … appears predisposed to repress negative emotions, and even chooses to confabulate.’ To some extent perhaps we inevitably confabulate stories about our lives, a process overseen by what Micheal Gazzaniga calls the left hemisphere ‘interpreter’. However, it is the right hemisphere that makes judgments about the truth or plausibility of these narratives.
References
- Mcgilchrist, Iain. (2010). The Master and His Emissary Chapter 2 What Do the Hemispheres Do (p. 163). London, UK: Yale University Press.
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Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Neuropsychology Status:☀️