Blissful Brain

The Blissful Brain is published by Gaia Thinking. For more information on how to order your copy, please click here.

Guardian G2: Mind over matter by Andy Darling

"Neuroscientist Shanida Nataraja has proven meditation does more than clear your head, it can put both halves of your brain to work, improving your concentration, memory, and decision-making...". To read more, please click here.

Upcoming talk: Yoga Ananda, Reigate, Surrey on Friday the 4th of June

Shanida Nataraja will be speaking at a seminar on The Blissful Brain on Friday, 04th June 2010 at 19:30 at Yoga Ananda Ltd. 46 Albert Road North, Reigate, Surrey, RH2 9EL. For more information, please click here.

Left Brain Versus Right Brain

In our Western society, left-brained activity (i.e. rationality and analytical thought) is often valued over right-brained activity (i.e. intuition and synthetic thought). In each individual, this imbalance can be corrected. Connections in the brain that are frequently used become strengthened. Conversely, connections that are rarely used become weakened and inactive. The same can be applied to the functioning of the two hemispheres. If the left hemisphere is used to the exclusion of the right, the strength of the connections in the inactive hemisphere will become weakened, whilst that in the active hemisphere will become strengthened.

This situation can be reversed by the practicing of tasks that are specifically right-brained (i.e. the appreciation of art, listening to a piece of music, one-pointed focus). The principle of complementarity states that an ideal living system exhibits a balance between complementary pairs. Neither left-brained nor right-brained activity should be viewed as more valuable than the other, and efforts should be made to challenge oneself with left- and right-brained activities on a regular basis to ensure this balance is maintained. When listening to a piece of music, both hemispheres are hard at work: the left hemisphere is responsible for identifying familiar tunes, analysing and recognising sequences and rhythms, and detecting changes in volume. Meanwhile, the right hemisphere captures the overall meaning, emotion, and context of the music, whilst simultaneously making judgements on pitch and different musical timbres. Music is therefore one of many tools available to facilitate a balance in left and right brain activity.

Interestingly, more recent experiments in split-brain patients have also revealed that the right hemisphere provides a more truthful description. If information is provided to the each of the hemispheres individually (i.e. the left eye is presented with one image, and the right eye with another), each hemisphere processes that information independently. If the patient is then asked to select one of four smaller images that matches the original image, the left and right hemispheres will each choose an image appropriate to the image that was initially presented to it. If, however, the left hemisphere is questioned about the image chosen by the right hemisphere, although it has no knowledge of the original image presented to the right hemisphere, it tends to quickly make up a story to explain the choice. The right hemisphere does not have this so-called interpreter mechanism.

This is again reflective of the different types of processing occurring in the two hemispheres. The left hemisphere is involved in logical and analytical thought. It therefore attempts to extract meaning from its inputs; order within chaos. This pattern-seeking behaviour can lead us to extract meaning from something that is purely random. This is perhaps best illustrated with the following example. Often, when one looks back at a chain of events, what appeared at the time to be a purely random series of events can, on closer inspection, appear to follow a specific pattern. In some cases, especially where human behaviour is concerned, these patterns are real: unhealthy behavioural patterns evoke certain, often traumatic, life situations, over and over again, until the behavioural pattern is acknowledged and broken. In some cases, however, the perceive pattern is an illusion. Our left hemisphere examines the information at its disposal, identifies a potential pattern, and then selectively remembers those events that appear to confirm this pattern. The left brain is therefore very inventive and creative; it is the storyteller, our inner narrator. The right hemisphere is involved in intuitive and abstract thought. It is aware of the spatial and temporal dimensions of a particular experience, aware of its emotional significance, and even be aware of abstract concepts associated with that experience, such as the function of a particular object. The right hemisphere is also the seat of attention, and it therefore controls the one-pointed focus on the present now experience. It is therefore able to accurately capture the whole experience, with the minimal amount of filtering of the information.

The left hemisphere acts like a search engine interface. The internal storyteller is constantly coming up with new schema i.e. new templates through which to filter one’s present and past experiences. Take the following example. A friend behaves badly. When thinking about this behaviour, you search your memory for other examples of events in which your friend also behaved badly. All your memories that involve that person are scanned and only those memories that fit this search template are retrieved. Depending on the search term used, you can choose to remember a particular person in a particular way. Memories are reconstructed from jigsaw puzzle pieces stored in the right hemisphere. Such is the durability of these memory circuits that we can remember events for the entire length of our life; nothing is ever forgotten, only the means of retrieving it (i.e. the appropriate search term[s]) can be lost.

When memories are accessed through processes occurring in the right hemisphere, the content of these memories are often fuller and more realistic. You experience the memory of an event without the filters in the left hemisphere. This has been confirmed in experiments by the American brain surgeon, Wilder Penfield. Penfield performed numerous brain surgeries on epileptic patients and found that stimulation of specific areas of the temporal cortex triggered in the patient a memory of a childhood experience. These recalled experiences were complete, containing information about the sights, sounds, smells, movement, and emotional content of that experience. These experiences were often those that would not be experienced under normal conditions. The hippocampus, which lies deep in the temporal lobe, is the site where our most emotionally charged memories are stored. Often these are repressed such that, on a day to day basis, we are not even aware that these memories exist. However, when we are placed in similar emotional circumstances, this emotional state can act as a trigger or cue that aids the retrieval of the buried memory (referred to as state-dependent memory). This is illustrated by accounts of so called “flashbulb” memories, in which an individual can remember, in precise detail, traumatic or catastrophic past events. Do you remember what you were doing when news of the Southern Asian tsunami reached the Western world, or when the twin towers in New York were attacked and collapsed? The heightened emotions triggered by the event prompt the accurate recall of the experience.

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