The right frontal lobes enables one to step back form espousing ‘my’ position, which enables us to empathize and consider the others point of view

For example, if the right hemisphere’s immediacy of association with emotion and the body (the right hemisphere is much more involved in emotions and bodily experience than the left hemisphere) leads it to prioritize what is close, what is ‘mine’, the right frontal lobe brings distance and delay to espousing ‘my’ position. As a result it enables others to stand forth as individuals like ‘me’; it enables a broader empathy and the beginnings of altruism. This is not a negation of something by the frontal lobe, but a modulation of it, an ‘unpacking’, if you like, of something that was there all along, albeit in germ only—something that comes to life only when a degree of necessary distance is interposed.

---

References

• Mcgilchrist, Iain. (2010). The Master and His Emissary Chapter 2 What Do the Hemispheres Do (p. 184). London, UK: Yale University Press.

Metadata

Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Neuropsychology Status:☀️