Brain crossover

[cidermaid]

I have a passing interest in the different configurations of brain dynamics. (As in the left / right - language / perception orientations). From some brief comments on this site and in other places, it would seem that I’m not alone in my suspicions and that many “arty” types have dual aspects (i.e. ambidextrous) or equally (but in no way disrespectfully) some have mentioned difficulty or named conditions relating to a specific cognitive condition.
So I was interested in the recent “organic” thread and also I was surprised by the exercise thread on surreal poetry, both of which caught my attention. I have stumbled across a book entitled “Drawing on the right side of the brain” (By Betty Edwards). Her premise is that you can train the right side of your brain using her techniques to become a more competent artist, by picking up and developing the activity of our (intuitive & perceptual) right side as opposed to allowing the dominant (and over trained verbal) left side to control the art.
This got me thinking about the aspects of writing poetry. In the act of writing we are using our left (verbal) side, but we want to express ourselves in terms of intuitive, perceptions and pictorial perspectives so surely we need to be able to have equal access the right side to create a great poem that crosses the boundary of communication into the realms of art?
So last night I tried a bit of an experiment. I have always been able to mirror write. So I did four short lines of text, first with my right - hand in mirror, then used a left hand “normal” write for the same, then under this left hand mirror, then a further right handed just upside down effort.
The conclusion was that the left hand mirror was a lot easier and flowing (and legible!) that it had any right to be for a first effort. Whilst the left hand “normal” text looked like a pre-school effort. So, having found out what was most effective / comfortable, I wrote a poem with my left hand in mirror text (in the mode of the surreal instructions in the exercise threads). I thought the result for a half hour experiment was surprising – the resulting poem was definably different (well I thought) to some of my “normal voice” poems. I’ve posted the results in the misc section, I think it is slightly Rowen-esque style diary thoughts (but my effort is not so well crafted).
Apologies for the long pre-amble. My question or discussion starter is: Has anyone else had any thoughts along these lines or done any similar experiments of this nature?
…well I thought it was interesting.

[milo]

I have never tried, or even heard of the technique (of course i have never tried writing poetry using pens or paper). Still I am fascinated. If I am getting the instructions correct, you write the text backwards using your less dominant hand using pen and paper?

[cidermaid]

Yes, maybe; Neanderthal as this sounds you could try it if you like. The idea is to try and switch into the non verbal side of the brain. I tried this through switching hands and then the mirror writing aspect was just because this was how my left hand happened to function best. (But is probably just a feature of my faulty wiring).
I was mostly just interested to find if anyone had any further info or had experienced anything along these lines before.

[rowens]

When I write with my left hand, I feel the need to start at the right of the page and write backwards. It feels uncomfortable if I don't. But I usually have no reason to do that anyway. I write with my right hand.

I'm not a scientist, so I'm more concerned with my mind than my brain. My mental-scape.


..............................................................................

I know that a human can live with half a brain. I know that brain transplants could be possible one day. I know this mostly through not being a scientist, so possible means possible, like it always does.
And I know that if you took one side of one individual's brain and transplanted it into the head of someone with half a brain, you'd still have one individual.

And a new mind-scape should form.

..........................................................................

I write with my right hand. But the scientists told me I have little to no rote learning skills. So I'd might as well not write with any hand.

I doubt I'd be much good at training any part of my brain rotely.

[Magpie]

Hi AJ,
I was fascinated when I read this post, I am very interested in the aspects of cognitive behaviour and emotions relating to right and left hemispheres of the brain. Because I am a musician, I have done little bits of research not into this in particular although it has cropped up in a lot of things that I have read regarding things like the ability to discern different tones/ musical notes. There is a whole branch of music science dedicated to this called cognitive musicology and also psychoacoustics touches on it as well. People with Perfect pitch which is an extremely rare ability indeed have been shown to have extremely developed right hemispheres in the brain which corresponds to the left hand, in fact all musicians have a more developed right hemisphere as do many creative people, but in music the right hemisphere which is emotional is beneficial for expressiveness and perception of tone, but the left hemisphere has to be also well developed because that controls rhythm and tempo. So drummers and percussionists have more developed.
It also seems that people who are ambidextrous and people with perfect pitch have a lot in common and it is not unusual for those people to "struggle" at school academically.
But originally what I wanted to say was what I thought you were going to mention. A few years ago now, as part of the new age hippie self development movement thingy mijiggy there were a few books coming out about releasing your inner child and the main aspect of this was drawing and writing with your left hand and this seems to have led to the current phase that you mentioned.
I'm also fairly certain that it was the same woman "Betty Edwards" who wrote the book about the inner child, although I can't seem to track it down on the net, but there are plenty of other books along the same lines, if you do a google search on "inner child left hand drawing" it brings up loads of stuff. but I'll shut up or else I'll just ramble on all night the way that I'm going at the moment.
Hope some of this makes sense, coz I haven't read it back to see if it does, but it's all in there somewhere, thanks for bringing up the subject.
All the best
AR

[rayheinrich]

The Right-Brain/Left-Brain Myth and Flow:
http://www.archetypewriting.com/articles...rticle.htm

from:
Archetype - The Writer's Guide to Psychology
http://www.archetypewriting.com/index.html

[cidermaid]

Hi Ar & Ray, thanks for leaving some thoughts for me to consider.
I had not come across any thing much on this before apart from some vague and very general info and then the book I had recently picked up. I was interested to hear about the other book she had written. I also went and had a look at the link you posted Ray.
I think the aspect that had most caught my attention was the idea that perhaps I could unlock a new or even different voice by tapping into and developing an ability to use the right side as part of my initial creative process.
Naturally being a shallow person desiring instant gratification, I read the back cover and skimmed through my book and then rushed off to have a go without having the least idea of what the finer nuances are, it was just something that fired my attention and I thought was really interesting so my next thought was to see what thoughts others had about this.
Both of you seem to be better informed than me.
Do you have any opinions or experience of trying any of the various methods?
Just interested to hear if anyone has had any results (good or bad) from this sort of thing.
Thanks AJ.

[milo]

I spent some time thinking about this (as thinking is easier than doing). For a little bit, I considered typing with only my left hand and it occurred to me that I never type with only my right hand. It made me wonder if typing naturally utilizes both sides of the brain as opposed to writing. Just thoughts.

I also had some thoughts on Ray's picture. Mostly to do with the movement of the musical section in musicians/non-musicians. At what level of musical accomplishment do you suppose this occurs? Or, are some people actual "musicians" while the rest are left in a state of simply playing instruments/singing, etc.?

Just thoughts, off to test my left hand mirror writing ability.

[billy]

the keyboard is set out in a way that makes using it with both hands easier than using it with one.

i'm right handed., have never thought about using any other. the experiments sound interesting when others do them but it's not something i'm into. would like to know any outcomes though

[cidermaid]

You raise a good point Milo about the typing skills, also I wonder if some of the elements of the aspects of the musical left / right bias could be attributed to the effects of training and stimulating the left hand to operate the instrument and in doing this the right side of the brain is not only strengthened but also given synaptic pairings and connections with the left side ...which is presumably busy reading the text of the music, untill you reach a skill level where you can enter the "flow" (as rays article called it) and you can play un-scored twiddlybits. (Or in the case of typing, of writing in the zone) your hands take over the keys ...but your observation is right - it is both hands simultaneously. I' had not thought of this previously.

[Magpie]

Hi all recent posters on this thread,
I've just been reading the recent posts and thought i would try and partly answer some of the musical ability questions. First of all Milo when you asked at which level of musical accomplishment does brain development begin, I can't be certain but I'm fairly sure that it is a gradual development right from, I suppose birth, as regards perception of tones which is the left hemisphere. As we all need and use this ability to some degree, but when someone starts to learn an instrument then I must surely develop at a faster rate. I know that when I started playing guitar, the idea of tuning it by ear was a daunting task then over time it became easier. I got to a point where I could tune it as long as I was in a silent enviroment, but even this became easier to the point where it doesn't matter how loud the enviroment is I can always tune in easily, although I do see in less experienced musicians the same struggles that I had, so I can only assume that this is due to development over time. Bizzarely the ability to percieve tone can actually get to good in the respect of you hear all tones, like the fridge, a noisy light, or laptop, these all have a certain pitch and when pitches are slightly out with each you get a phasing effect which makes the sounds wobble/ oscillate against eachother. I have retuned my guitar to the fridge a few times because I couldn't cope with the dissonance. People with perfect pitch frequently feel ill and nauseous because of this phenomenon.
Regarding forced left hand development due to playing an instrument then I suppose it firstly depends on the instrument. In piano left hand plays the bassline most of the time, so in sense it's keeping rhythm and the right plays melody which is mostly the expressive content in music, but not always. In guitar it could almost be seen as the opposite if you are right handed, then the right hand either strums or finger picks which is in effect the rhythm. Whereas drummers both hands playing rhythm. There is another aspect to all of this which is muscle memory, but I'll come back to that soon because my tea is starting to burn. Hope this makes some sort of sense.
AR

[Leanne]

Just to clarify: music doesn't use both hemispheres of the brain just because it's using both hands. Singing also uses both hemispheres. The reason music is considered an holistic mental activity is because you need to simultaneously access pitch, tone, melody and rhythm from different parts of the brain as well as using recall, dexterity (vocal dexterity counts, you still need to make your mouth and diaphragm work precisely) and in some cases, read music. Just using two hands does not count as a rich brain activity -- it's only a single task really. Writing by hand activates thousands more synapses than typing, which is pretty much straight recall.

---

On drawing on the right side of the brain, this was one of the first activities I remember from high school art class -- really valuable stuff. It involved not just using your other hand, but also drawing profiles the opposite way to your preference, drawing mirror images, creating pictures out of null space rather than lines, lots of things. It's terrific fun and excellent for the discipline.

[milo]

I think I was taking this from a different angle than you were, Leanne. I was less interested in 'rich brain activity' and more interested in exercises that suggest the two sides of the brain actually have two different personalities. The left side, controlling all communication is the one that tends to define a person's personality. There is a procedure called a corpus callosotomy which actually separates both sides of the brain and they continue to operate independently of each other. What becomes interesting is that certain exercises suggest the right side exists as a separate personality that can be communicated with through mirror writing with the left hand. I was more interested in just handing my other side a pen to see if it had anything interesting to say.

I think it may be too late to try 'stimulating' my brain . . .

from a page defining the procedure and side effects:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain

[Magpie]

Just to clarify: music doesn't use both hemispheres of the brain just because it's using both hands. Singing also uses both hemispheres. The reason music is considered an holistic mental activity is because you need to simultaneously access pitch, tone, melody and rhythm from different parts of the brain as well as using recall, dexterity (vocal dexterity counts, you still need to make your mouth and diaphragm work precisely) and in some cases, read music. Just using two hands does not count as a rich brain activity -- it's only a single task really. Writing by hand activates thousands more synapses than typing, which is pretty much straight recall.

---

On drawing on the right side of the brain, this was one of the first activities I remember from high school art class -- really valuable stuff. It involved not just using your other hand, but also drawing profiles the opposite way to your preference, drawing mirror images, creating pictures out of null space rather than lines, lots of things. It's terrific fun and excellent for the discipline.

I agree that its not a straight forward issue of hands and brain hemispheres. I'm a big believer in rhythm being a whole body experience that is felt as a whole and not just concentrated on one part of the body such as a tapping foot or hand.
There is an old joke about how you know when there is a singer at your front door and something about never having the right key and not knowing when to come in. But it's not appropriate for this thread so I'll say no more.
AR

[serge gurkski]

Regarding forced left hand development due to playing an instrument then I suppose it firstly depends on the instrument. In piano left hand plays the bassline most of the time, so in sense it's keeping rhythm and the right plays melody which is mostly the expressive content in music, but not always. In guitar it could almost be seen as the opposite if you are right handed, then the right hand either strums or finger picks which is in effect the rhythm. Whereas drummers both hands playing rhythm. There is another aspect to all of this which is muscle memory, but I'll come back to that soon because my tea is starting to burn. Hope this makes some sort of sense.
AR

There are "left hand" string instruments (for Hendrix, Albert King(?) etc) but I've never heard of a left hand piano. Still there must be left hand pianists (those who use the left for writing etc.). I wonder what effect it would have on their playing, if there were left grands etc. ,-) I am serious.
On to the topic: I often could use 2 right hands like, when I hold a glass and a cig while on the pc: I still would like to use the right hand to type. So, wait: 3 right hands. the only thing I need the left for is holding the fork but then I prefer spoons anyway. On a plate the "main" dish must be positioned on my left hand side. Just for your info.

[cidermaid]

Wow I need to stay up later, so i can join in a bit more. You lot have some great lines of thoughts going.
Milo has got hold of what it was I originally thinking about as a concept but all the other stuff is fasinating I think.

[serge gurkski]

You folks should not stop talkin just becuzzzz i entered the room. Did the three right hands confuse you? That was unintended. I am out this this sec if it helps (any). I umm adore your ummm talk. shhh gone
go on pls

[Magpie]

You folks should not stop talkin just becuzzzz i entered the room. Did the three right hands confuse you? That was unintended. I am out this this sec if it helps (any). I umm adore your ummm talk. shhh gone
go on pls

After looking back at what I wrote I admit I got slightly sidetracked, and then luckily for everyone I was running low on internet credit or else I might of rambled on all night.
And I checked up, and there are left handed pianos, all the keys the other way round, its crazy.

---

Hi AJ,
I forgot to say I did read in a few places on the net whilst I was looking at this brain hemisphere stuff, that it is supposed to be "bad" for you to train yourself to be ambidextrous. And although technically that is not what mirror writing is, it sort of is. But at the same time I neglected to read any of the articles, so to what degree "bad" is I'm not sure, I should track them down again to find out. It's probably not life threatening kind of "bad" I wouldn't of thought..... oooopss.

[rowens]

They had pencils at some schools that had to be used with the right hand. They gave them to left-handed kids.

[serge gurkski]

ya rowen. left is a bad term while right kills us.



my gf is back.
i am writing a fatty

my poem is for myself


I want us to be brilliant,