Ted Talks: Iain McGilchrist: The Divided Brain
Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist speaks about the theory how
the left brain vs. the right brain functions. He explains in his talk on
Ted.com how the brain is not divided and uses both halves of the brain to
function in every situation. His
illustrated talk is very quick, yet understandable and enlightening.
Dr. McGilchrist explains how the Western society has viewed
the brain as two parts: one of reason and one of imagination. I love how he says that “this organ, which is
all about making connections, is profoundly divided”. He declares that the understanding that the
human brain is divided into one of imagination and one of reason is incorrect.
He states that the right hemisphere of the brain gives a
broad attention to vigilance of what is happening around the person, whereas
the left hemisphere is giving its attention, narrowly to detail. He goes into
an intricately explained speech on how the mind works together with the help of
the frontal lobes to determine reasoning and imagination. It’s very interesting
and I don’t have the ability to restate what he so eloquently explains, other than
to say that he brings it all together nicely.
This speech is illustrated by an animation with a hand
drawing pictures as he speaks. It’s very entertaining and helps bring the ideas
to the audience in a clear and succinct manner.
Dr. McGilchrist gains the audience’s attention through the artwork along
with his very believable ideas. He gains their trust by explaining how the
brain works and narrates the ideas with graphics. Both, the ideas and the
graphics build trust and give him credibility on these new ideas about the
brain and how it functions.
He explains how the left hemisphere of the brain views the world’s
lifeless objects whereas the right hemisphere is more about living objects such
as people, plants, etc. He tells how the two intermix to create reality for the
person and how every person’s brain mixes these things differently.
Dr. McGilchrist’s ideas about how the Western society was
built mainly on left brain activities, is very intriguing. He goes on to say
that the world as we know it now is very left brain signified through the “virtual
being more important than the real”. How “the technological becomes important
and there is a loss of uniqueness”. Basically, how the left brain functions have overshadowed
the more intuitive side of the right brain in our societies. He goes on to
explain how we are living paradoxical lives, where, as we “seek happiness it
builds resentment and unhappiness which leads to mental illness”.
The speech is very complex yet intriguing. I like how he
ends with a quote from Einstein, “The intuitive mind is a gift and the rational
mind is a faithful servant”. He says
that “we’ve created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the
gift”. There in a nutshell is the crux
of his whole speech: how we have focused on the strengths of the left
hemisphere (reason, purpose, knowledge) and have forgotten, as a society, the
very valuable strengths of the right hemisphere (love, emotion, intuitiveness).
I highly recommend viewing this lecture
yourself at: The
Brain Divided.
McGilchrist, Iain. The
Divided Brain. [Animated lecture]. Retrieved from Best of the Web at
TED.com: http://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain.html.
