The right hemisphere allows for the recognition of uniqueness and familiarity, while the left only re-presents generic categories of things
The left hemisphere filters experience into an abstract representation, while the right sees things without preconceptions. As a result, it is the right hemisphere that has the capacity to distinguish specific examples within a category, rather than categories alone: it stores details to distinguish specific instances. The right hemisphere presents unique instances of things and familiar objects, where the left hemisphere only re-presents categories of things, and generic, non-specific objects.
In keeping with this, the right hemisphere uses unique referents, where the left hemisphere uses non-unique referents. It is with the right hemisphere that we distinguish individuals of all kinds, places as well as faces. In fact it is precisely its capacity for holistic processing (The right hemisphere sees the whole first, and then the left hemisphere separates it into parts) that enables the right hemisphere to recognize individuals. Individuals are, after all, Gestalt wholes: that face, that voice, that gait, that sheer ‘quiddity’ of the person or thing, defying analysis into parts.
Where the left hemisphere is more concerned with abstract categories and types, the right hemisphere is more concerned with the uniqueness and individuality of each existing thing or being. The right hemisphere’s role as the ‘anomaly detector’ might in fact be seen rather as an aspect of its preference for things as they actually exist (which are never entirely static or congruent—always changing, never the same) over abstract representation, in which things are made to be fixed and equivalent, types rather than individuals.
References
- Mcgilchrist, Iain. (2010). The Master and His Emissary Chapter 2 What Do the Hemispheres Do (104). London, UK: Yale University Press.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Neuropsychology Status:☀️