Posts Tagged ‘left right brain’

About the Left and the Right Brain

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

The human brain is divided into two, distinct cerebral hemispheres connected by the corpus callosum.

The sides resemble each other, and, generally, each hemisphere’s structure is mirrored by the other side, yet, despite the strong similarities, the functions of each hemisphere are very different.

Linear reasoning and language functions such as grammar and vocabulary often are lateralized to the left hemisphere of the brain.

In contrast, holistic reasoning language functions, the transduction of visual and musical stimuli, such as spatial manipulation, facial perception and artistic ability are functions of the right hemisphere.

People who were more active in the left frontal brain (right handed) deal with a stressful situation with continued optimism. Right brained (left handed) people are much faster at recalling memories of negative events. They’re more prone to depression.

Left frontal person are a little more extroverted, more willing to take social risks, because they’re driven by the opportunity for positive things. Where the person who’s right frontally activated are more driven by avoiding more negative things.

 The winner of The Nobel Prize in Medicine 1981, Roger W. Sperry made some of the most profound discoveries in neuroscience when he showed that the two sides of our brain can be independently conscious.

 In the 1960s, surgeons developed a procedure to cut the nerve bundle that normally connects the two hemispheres as a last resort to control difficult cases of epilepsy.

Before this, the classic view of the brain was that the left brain dominated thinking and was primarily the seat of language, analysis, and high-level learned motor skills. The right, or “minor,” hemisphere was considered less highly evolved and unable to understand reading or speech.

When Sperry started testing patients with split brains, he and other scientists were surprised. He found that not only could these patients continue to carry on most everyday functions after the two hemispheres were disconnected, but that the right brain wasn’t as word-deaf and word-blind as once thought.

It wasn’t as advanced in language skills as the left, but patients using only their right brains could recognize such sophisticated spoken phrases as “a measuring instrument,” and could spell three- and four-letter words.

Also, in split brain patients, both sides of the brain were clearly conscious, even when they weren’t aware of what the other side was seeing, hearing or thinking. While the two sides of the brain obviously worked in tandem when they were connected, they could operate independently if necessary.

When Children are born without a corpus callosum the hemisphere is able to divide itself in a right and left function.

Lesley J. Rogers and Gisela Kaplan (Comperative Vertebrate Cognition (2004, Kluwer)) show that the specialisation of the left hemisphere is highly conserved throughout evolution. On an evolutionary scale, this anatomy can be traced from primates to birds, rodents, reptiles, amphibians and fish and even insects.

Across the animal kingdom, the left brain processes complex tasks, like collecting food. It’s the side of the brain that gets animals out and doing things. The right brain deals with threats, like predators. It’s the defensive side.

When we zoom into one hemisphere we see a fractal pattern emerge. The hemispheres are divided into lobes that are focused on the right or the left.

Left Thread Right Thread
Particular General
Local (but to achieve the precision we need a single context, we move to the UNIVERSAL to recruit universal constants) Non-Local (BUT context sensitivity is local and so very diverse)
Objects Relationships
The ONE The MANY
Precise (quantitative precision) Approximate (qualitative precision)
What (Who,Which) Where (How, When)
Tonic Harmonic
Internal Linkage (within) External Linkage (Between)
Syntax/Semantics Semantics/Percepts
Single Context Multi Context
Exagerate, Distort, AS INTERPRETED AS-IS
Known Unknown
Ordered Disordered (or loosly ordered – the ‘everyday’)
Non-Change (need stability for high precision) Change
Ordinality (emphasis on directions – vectors) Cardinality (emphasis on magnitudes – scalars)
What IS What IS NOT
delusion illusion
repression supression
What WAS What COULD HAVE BEEN
What WILL BE What COULD BE
+1/-1 zero/infinity
Text Context
Foreground Background
Quantitative Qualitative
Expression Behind Expression
Self Others
The Dot The Field
Particle Interpretations Wave Interpretations
Metonymy (part-for-whole) Metaphor (whole-for-whole)
Axon-like (pulse, FM = SEQUENCE, Ordinality) Dendrite-like (wave amplitude, AM = SIZE, Cardinality)
neuron synaptic ‘soup’
dopamine biased (internal linkage emphasis, internal integrity) serotonin biased (external linkage emphasis, social integrity)
psychosis, schizophrenia neurosis, depression
identify re-identify
blend, bound (feeling terms for whole, parts) bond, bind (feeling terms for statics, dynamics)
Vectoring Waypointing

The divide between the Left and the Right can also be found in psychopathology. According to Interpersonal Theory all pyschological problems can be explained by two factors called Communion (Right) and Agency (Left).

Interpersonal Theory explains all the extremes in the human personality with ease.

I started my research for this blog because I wanted to learn more about MU.

Mu was according to legend the original home of mankind. All subsequent civilizations descended from it. The Pacific islands and their inhabitants are supposed to be the last survivors of this primordial motherland. Most of the time Mu is related to the Pacific Ring of Fire.

One of the most interesting books about Mu were written by James Churchward. Chuchward served with the British Army for thirty years. He claimed that, while posted in India, he befriended a priest (‘Rishi’), who revealed to him ancient tablets written in an otherwise unknown language.

The Rishi taught Churchward how to read this language, Naacal. The tablets described the land of Mu. He also claimed that he was able to discern writing from Mu on a mysterious set of tablets discovered in Mexico by an explorer named William Niven.

What is the relationship between Mu and the Left/Right-division in our brain?

Churchward has spend most of his life collecting symbols and comparing these symbols to find the root, Mu. He explains his research in The Sacred Symbols of Mu (1933).

 If you study the “symbolism of Mu” you will find the Left/Right-division and the Left/Right-fractal everywhere. It was called Male and Female in every culture he researched.

 The second level of the fractal (2×2. LR, LL, RR, RL) were called the Four Forces and they were combined with the Union (a small circle) in the middle. The second level generates the symbol of the cross and the swastika.

If we translate the Left and the Right into a zero and a one the fractal generates on the third level the patterns of the I Ching.

He ends his book with a citation of his Rishi Master: “My son, the brain of man is his storehouse for knowledge, but the holding capacity of this storehouse is limited.

Therefore, never put anything into it that is not valuable for your spiritual progress, or that which is not absolutely necessary for the development and continuance of your material body to the end of this incarnation, in order to prepare for your entrance into the world beyond.

Learn and store the wisdom of the teachings of nature, for nature is the great school house for attaining wisdom, nature is God’s voice speaking.

Materialism, generally, is not worth storing, only that which appertains to the elevation of your mind and soul, that which will raise you to a higher plane, thus preparing you for the continuance of your life in the world beyond, a step in your eternal life.

And remember, that when you enter the world beyond, you will leave all materialism behind. You can take nothing with you, nor will you remember anything about it, only Love you will remember, for Love, like your soul, is everlasting, it cannot die.

Approach the Heavenly Father with full confidence and love. His loving arms are always stretched out to welcome you. If you slip or fall by the way, yet approach Him in confidence and penitence, He will forgive and welcome you because He, Himself, is all Love“.

This is exactly what Roger W. Sperry tried to explain to the world when he reflected on his own discovery.

Do you want to know more about the Right Brain view this video:

LINKS

The Sperry Lecture

The Relationship between Chaos Theory, Fractals, Lyapunov, Minkowski and the TAO

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

chaotic attractorChaos theory is the theory of Dynamic (Non-Linear) Systems. Dynamic systems converge to a state called an Attractor.

A fractal is a shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is a copy of the whole. This property is called Self-Reference.

Self-Referencial Dynamic Systems are represented by a Strange Attractor .

I want to start with a few citations of HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF CHAOS THEORY: Consciousness, Physiology, Perception, and Psychology by Iona Miller and Graywolf Swinney, ©1992.

Chaos underlies the ability of the brain to respond flexibly to the outside world and to generate novel activity patterns, including those that are experienced as fresh ideas (also fresh behavior, emotions, belief systems, mythologies, etc.).

Chaos results in meaning-laden perception, a gestalt, that is unique to each individual.

Chaos is implicated in human perception as a multi-sensory phenomenon. The controlled chaos of the brain is more than an accidental by-product, like “putting your brain in neutral.”

Indeed, it may be the chief property that makes the brain different from an artificial-intelligence machine. One profound advantage chaos may confer on the brain is that chaotic systems continually produce novel activity patterns“.

Research may reveal that assessments of personality or a personality trait over time generate data that leads to a fractal correlation dimension. Such evidence would confirm that personality or that a particular personality trait may be desribed as a strange attractor of associated behavior”.

In the article they apply Chaos Theory and Fractals to the Human. What they are showing is that Self-Reference (A Fractal) is the Result of a Chaotic Process.

Out of the Chaos of Creativity a Repeating Pattern Emerges.

Chaos is not total randomness, but implies an implicate, “hidden”, or occult order within the nature of reality“.

point attractorThe Repeating Patterns looks Chaotic but when we find the Right Fractal behind the Order in Chaos we can know where the Path is Moving to (the Attractor).

To dig deeper into Chaos we have to dig deep into mathematics. We have to dig so deep that the language becomes almost incomprehensible but let us have a try.

A citation out of More than Synchrony: Chaoticity may be necessary for conscious brain functioning (Juergen Fell ea): “Indeed, estimation of nonlinear EEG characteristicslike dimensions and Lyapunov exponents revealed a pronounced decrease not only of complexity, but also of chaoticity during unconscious states like deep sleep”

 ” Sufficient dynamical complexity of brain activity, seems to be one more necessary condition.

Without chaoticity our brains might be unable to switch immediately between different oscillatory patterns and thereby different modes of operation”. 

A citation out of Some Thoughts on Time, Quantum Mechanics, Geometry and Free Will (Linas VEPSTAS) : “The strange thing for us is, we live in this hyperbolic Minkowski space, but we don’t seem to notice much positive Lyapunov exponents in our lives.

 Other than that nature all around us seems to be fractal and self-similar … other than that, we don’t notice.

I sometimes wonder if the quantum-entanglement problems of quantum-mechanics are really some manifestation of life in Minkowski space, some deep connection we haven’t noticed just yet“.

The Lyapunov exponents determine the predictability of a dynamical (Chaotic) system. When we don’t seem to notice much positive Lyapunov exponents in our life we experience life as a “random” process. The main reason that we don’t notice the self-reference is that we are stuck with our own attractor. We are repeating our own patterns all the time and are unable to resonate with the pattern of the Universe.

When the exponents decrease Life become simple again. This happens when we dream. So dreaming is a way “to make things simple“, to “understand what is happening“.

Minkowski space is a four-dimensional space. It was used by Einstein to describe space/time (The Chronotope).

When Space/Time contains positive Lyaponov exponents Space/Time is highly predictable.

This happens when Quantum Entanglement takes place.

cycle attractorQuantum Entanglement (QE) is the Union of seperate Parts into a Whole. QE makes it possible to be in Two or more States at the same moment.

It even makes it possible to Unite with Everything.

QE gives us the feeling that there is something that is connecting us to an Entity on a Higher Level.

When QE happens we are in the AND-state and experience a feeling of Harmony.

When we are not in the AND-state we are in the OR-state.

In this OR-state there are Four “Fractal Attractors” possible. They also give us a “feeling”.

We feel we are Stuck” (Point-Attractor) or

we feel we are “Going Round in Circles (Cycle-attractor)” or

Spirals (Torus-Attractor).

The most Attractive Fractal Attractor, the AND-attractor gives us the feeling that “We are in the Flow (Tao) or in The Now (Chaos)”.

Our Universe is “looking” for Quantum Entanglement. This state of Harmony cannot be perceived in our current 4D-Reality (The Minkowski-Space).

According to Tiller our Unconsciousness connects to another 4D-Reality that is highly related to what the Scientists call Dark Matter.

Out of this Reality The Force of Life (Chi, Prana) is moving into our Body.

If we look at the current state of our World it does not feel as a Strange Feeling that we have to connect to the Force of Life again.

Connecting to this Force is Difficult for us (and me).

Strange attractorThe knowlegde about it is hidden in old “Mysteries” and “Magical practices“.

Many people don’t believe in this or even don’t want to believe in it because it is connected to the Dark Forces.

Strangely enough the Force is also connected to Dark Matter.

It seems we need to enter the Dark to find the Light.

We have to fight and embrace our Dark Shadow (Jung).

 

 

LINKS

About Chaostheory & Evolution

About Chaostheory & Psychology