Neuroscientist argues the left side of our brains have taken over our minds | Hacker News Reader

Neuroscientist argues the left side of our brains have taken over our minds

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25 pointspseudolus19 comments

> Have you ever been told that you are more of a left-brain or right-brained thinker? Maybe you’ve heard someone use those terms to account for being more inclined towards science and math than art and literature (or vice versa). Growing up, I often felt conflicted about which side of my brain was “dominant,” because I couldn’t choose between my love for the STEM disciplines and the arts. Research has shown, however, that I needn’t have worried— the left-brain right-brain dichotomy is a myth.

https://plebeianscience.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/debunking-t...

This, most people have both hemispheres equally underdeveloped, and no matter which they use, they are lazy at both.

I have often wondered whether the eigenvector of political orientation being low-dimensional (e.g. left-right, conventional-independent) is somehow related to bicameralism (i.e. which side has executive function). It seems like the struggle between left and right we see in the world around us mirrors a struggle within ourselves. The fact that right and left modes of thought are reflected in political arenas, social dynamics and intellectual occupations across human cultures is too universal to be coincidence. There is something qualitatively familiar between left- and right-mindedness that transcends social programming and I suspect may be rooted in neurophysiology.

Medical symptoms of damage to the right side of the brain: https://www.flintrehab.com/right-hemisphere-brain-damage/

I don't really see a lot of people ignoring their left sides out there or unable to recognize faces of friends and loved ones.

However, absolutely any idea or theory that ends with ". . . And this is why we can't do anything about climate change or political polarization" can usually get a non-fiction writer published these days, and this guy fits the bill.

For some actually interesting research on human brains, even if from over 20 years ago, see https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/123.1.74 – most right-handed people activate left hemisphere brain regions during language processing, but approximately 7.5% of them activate right hemisphere brain regions instead. Their brains (or at least this aspect of them) are "swapped" compared to the majority of the population.

I find that fascinating as an example of genuine biological neurodiversity, with no known clinical significance. There is a lot of talk of "neurodiversity" nowadays, but it is neurodiversity assumed to exist based on observable differences in people's behaviour or the assignment of a clinical diagnosis – and not everyone with certain behavioural traits gets the diagnosis, since the process of diagnosis is heavily influenced by social and cultural factos – and in most cases with no identifiable neurobiological difference in any particular individual. All the people in this study were "neurotypical" – they had no known diagnosis of any psychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorder – and yet 7.5% of them were actually neurodiverse in this particular way, and I imagine if you looked for other forms of biological neurodiversity too and added them all up, you might reach the conclusion that "neurotypical" people don't really exist and at the biological level everyone is neurodiverse.

The more complex the system, the easier it gets to cook up a story that everyone will buy - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09637214209176...

The decades-old book “drawing on the right side of the brain“ has a lot of compelling discussion in this area.

https://channelmcgilchrist.com/

Neuroscientist? He's just a psychiatrist. The video also mentions his "revolutionary theory" and that's just ... wrong. He writes a huge book based mostly on pioneering work by Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga and fills it with nice-sounding nonsense that makes the backs of neuroscientists shudder, and that qualifies as a "revolutionary theory"?

Comparisons to Freud and Darwin? When the only original contribution of his was to oversimplify scientific work done by others and wax poetic about how it explains everything? Spoiler: it doesn't.

McGilchrist is nothing more than a pseudoscience influencer.

Is his oversimplification true to the original researchers findings or is he inserting unproven claims?

What makes it pseudoscience and what author’s would you recommend apart from the ones you already mentioned?

Gazzaniga is featured on the documentary, is the documentary any good?

What’s the real story here and what sources do you recommend for an outsider?

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Why was this flagged? If it’s that bad, wouldn’t we benefit from construct criticism?

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