The right hemisphere is concerned with living things and the left with the non-living
The right hemisphere is more concerned with living individuals than man-made objects. This flows naturally from its interest in whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves, and its capacity for empathy (the right hemisphere is responsible for the ability to put ourselves in anothers shoes)—as well as how The right hemisphere sees the whole first, and then the left hemisphere separates it into parts: there is an intuitive relationship between cutting things up and depriving them of life. It is the left hemisphere alone that codes for non-living things, while both hemispheres code for living things, perhaps because The right hemisphere allows for the recognition of uniqueness and familiarity, while the left only re-presents generic categories of things, the living can be seen as unique individuals or, as the left hemisphere would see it, as objects of use, prey, ‘things’, and so on.
However, there is one clean divide between the hemispheres, the left coding for the non-living, and the right for the living, regardless of the task. There are even different brain networks subserving the identification of living and nonliving entities. Food, however, and musical instruments, presumably because of the intimate way in which they take part in the life of the body, sort with the living rather than the non-living. The body as such is a right hemisphere entity, whereas body ‘parts’ are the province of the left hemisphere.
References
- Mcgilchrist, Iain. (2010). The Master and His Emissary Chapter 2 What Do the Hemispheres Do (111). London, UK: Yale University Press.
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Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Neuropsychology Status:☀️