Hemispheric Asymmetry: What's Right and What's Left, Volume 488A magazine advertisement for a luxury automobile calls it a "car for the left side of your brain" because of its state-of-the-art engineering and a "car for the right side of your brain" because of its sleek styling. In the past few years, such popular renderings of "right brain" and "left brain" functioning have encouraged the belief that the left hemisphere controls symbolic processing and rational thinking while the right hemisphere controls artistic, intuitive, and creative thinking. Joseph B. Hellige argues that this view is far too simplistic. In this book, Hellige attempts to sort what we know about hemispheric asymmetry from the fanciful interpretations popular culture has embraced. The cortex of the human brain, which has more neurons than any other brain structure, is responsible for the higher-order mental processes that make human beings unique among species. Anatomically, the cortex is divided into right and left hemispheres roughly equivalent in appearance but not completely equivalent in information-processing abilities and propensities. Indeed, the two hemispheres are components of a much larger brain system encompassing numerous subcortical structures, all of which interact in the normal brain to produce unity of thought and action. How, then, do the two hemispheres interact to form an integrated information-processing system? What is the relationship of hemispheric asymmetry to perception, cognition, and action? Is hemispheric asymmetry unique to humans, and how did it evolve? In this book, the author surveys the extensive data in the field and provides a valuable overview of our current understanding of hemispheric asymmetry and its evolutionary precedents. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Behavioral Asymmetries in Humans | 28 |
The Quest for a Fundamental Dichotomy | 54 |
Copyright | |
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ability activation addition areas argued aspects asymmetries in humans behavioral asymmetries biological asymmetries Bryden callosal cerebral hemispheres Chapter chimpanzees cognitive cognitive neuroscience components corpus callosum cortex discussed dyslexia dyslexics earlier emergence emotion evidence evolutionary example fact favored females fetal Figure functional hemispheric asymmetry Galaburda hand handedness Hellige hemi hemisphere is dominant hemispheric asym hominids homologous hypothesis important indicate individual differences individual variation infants interaction interhemispheric Japanese macaques Kosslyn language later left hemisphere left-handers left-hemisphere dominance letters LVF/right metacontrol metry mode of processing monkeys motor neural neurologically intact Neuropsychologia noted parietal lobe pattern perception performance planum temporale possible present-day humans presented primates rats relatively right hemi right hemisphere right-handers right-hemisphere dominance right-hemisphere injury RVF/left RVF/left-hemisphere trials Sergent sex differences similar spatial frequencies species sphere spheric asymmetry split-brain patients stimuli studies suggest sylvian fissure task unilateral versus visual field visuospatial processing whereas Witelson