If you go to your local bookstore, you'll see that a lot of junk science about the left and right hemispheres of the brain is still being published. That's why I was so glad to learn a bit over a year ago about a terrific book that gets the science right.
I have blogged more than once about this book titled The Master and His Emissary (links to those posts below), and have recommend it many, many, many times. A new review of the book has just been published in Los Angeles Review of Books and I wanted to make sure you saw it if you have any interest in brain hemispheres.
From "Oppositional Thinking: On reconciling the two hemispheres of the brain":
...In the 1970s and 1980s, the “split brain” became a hot topic in neuroscience, and soon popular wisdom produced a flood of books explaining how the left brain was a “scientist” and the right an “artist.”
Much insight into human psychology can be gleaned from these popular accounts, but “hard” science soon recognized that this simple dichotomy could not accommodate the wealth of data that ongoing research into hemispheric function produced. And as no “real” scientist wants to be associated with popular misconceptions — for fear of peer disapproval — the fact that ongoing research revealed no appreciable functional differences between the hemispheres — they both seemed to “do” the same things, after all — made it justifiable for neuroscientists to put the split-brain question on the back burner, where it has pretty much stayed. Until now.
Links to previous posts on the book:
- Are you involved in half-brained mediations? Let's promote full-brained conflict resolution
- Review of The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
- About the vast left-brain conspiracy and those driven to ecstasy by all things neuro
- The brain and culture: "The mind's great conflict spills over onto the world stage"
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