Just this weekend I heard that right-brain left-brain stuff is a myth, yet still useful as a metaphor. I will still read the book because it is 70 pages and that is very attractive to me, especially as a model. A very helpful book report - thank you!
Mimi that is a great comment and I'm glad you brought it up. While I was preparing to write this article I went browsing PubMed for articles about left/right brain hemisphere dominance and I found a lot of things in psychology journals (social science) but nothing in neurology (medical science), so I'm skeptical that there's a true biological source. This is encouraging because I think some of us are probably "more creative" and some "more analytical" but it's not written in stone, we weren't born wired that way. Creativity and analytical thinking are skills that can be enhanced with study and experience just like most things.
Well, that's a lot to process... at least you got my only editing recommendation already.
There was a recent Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me episode with an interview of the editor in chief of Pitchfork, Puja Patel, the music critic equivalent of your favorite NYT book reviewer. At some point the comedians were asking her what they should listen to to be cool with their kids and surprisingly her pick aligned with mine and not with my daughter's. Don't think that's a win for anyone involved.
The other relevant podcast that shines some light on neurobiology is this interview with Iain McGilchrist on some more subtle differences between the left and right brain hemispheres that started with nematode brains but goes well beyond the logic/creativity divide, backed by head injury research:
Just this weekend I heard that right-brain left-brain stuff is a myth, yet still useful as a metaphor. I will still read the book because it is 70 pages and that is very attractive to me, especially as a model. A very helpful book report - thank you!
Mimi that is a great comment and I'm glad you brought it up. While I was preparing to write this article I went browsing PubMed for articles about left/right brain hemisphere dominance and I found a lot of things in psychology journals (social science) but nothing in neurology (medical science), so I'm skeptical that there's a true biological source. This is encouraging because I think some of us are probably "more creative" and some "more analytical" but it's not written in stone, we weren't born wired that way. Creativity and analytical thinking are skills that can be enhanced with study and experience just like most things.
Well, that's a lot to process... at least you got my only editing recommendation already.
There was a recent Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me episode with an interview of the editor in chief of Pitchfork, Puja Patel, the music critic equivalent of your favorite NYT book reviewer. At some point the comedians were asking her what they should listen to to be cool with their kids and surprisingly her pick aligned with mine and not with my daughter's. Don't think that's a win for anyone involved.
The other relevant podcast that shines some light on neurobiology is this interview with Iain McGilchrist on some more subtle differences between the left and right brain hemispheres that started with nematode brains but goes well beyond the logic/creativity divide, backed by head injury research:
https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/one-head-two-brains/