Some Thoughts from Iain McGilchrist on “The Divided Brain” — Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

I very much admire the work of Iain McGilchrist and commend to you his books and articles, including The Master and His Emissary and The Matter With Things.  This is a particularly good interview on Prairie Public Radio; here is a short excerpt from Dr. McGilchrist:

 “Well, you can imagine I was advised not to because there was a period in the 60s and 70s when people were enthusiastic about this. And then later in the 20th century, piece by piece of research suggested that, in fact, both hemispheres were involved in everything. And all that really shows us is that we’d answer the question ‘what the difference is’ wrongly.

 In other words, it’s not true that the left is a little bit boring, but highly dependable, rational, linguistic. And the right hemisphere is a little bit given to going off on a creative thing and not dependable and a bit emotional. This is not what it’s about.”

…

 “And what effectively I’ve found is that it’s to do with these two kinds of attention, which are, you know, of evolutionary high importance. So, in order to get food, you need to pose a kind of targeted, narrow- beam attention to some little thing to get it. But to see the rest of the picture, including to see predators while you’re getting your lunch, you don’t want to become somebody else’s, well then, you need another part of the brain that’s doing just the opposite: looking out for the whole picture in a sustained, broad, open, vigilant way.”

~  Betty Edwards