Thanks to faithful correspondent William Graham, who shared this link with me, tonight I will be talking about that whole split brain thing that got me so annoyed earlier this week.

But I will be doing it based not on an irritating essay but on this very interesting talk which comes to you from the mind and mouth of renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist and the always amusing and entertaining visuals come from those fancy folks at RSA Animate.

So sit back and get the skinny on what is up with split brain science in this day and age!

It’s a lot clearer than that stupid essay, isn’t it? Yes, the old oversimplifications about language being in one half of the brain or creativity being only in another are long since dead. This, I knew.

But the essay made it sound like we had given up on hemispheric specialization altogether, which is patently absurd, and I am glad Doctor McGilchrist backs me up on that.

I am quite intrigued to find out that in terms of the ration between the corpus callosum and total brain size, our brains have actually grown less connected over our evolutionary history. This suggests that either there was a very good reason why greater separation was needed, or that the evolutionary pressure was for the rest of our brains to grow in size and function and there was not sufficient pressure for our corpus callosum to keep pace.

It might well be that semi-independent cerebral hemispheres are actually far better for abstract reasoning and other higher mental functions than a fully integrated mind. Each hemisphere can concentrate on its specialties most of the time and only pass information in between when it’s needed.

I also had no idea that the hemispheres were not symmetrical. That is highly counterintuitive and as our lecturer points out, there must have been a damned good reason for us to develop in a way that clearly takes up more space and doesn’t fit as well in our symmetrical skulls.

I wish he has followed that up, in fact. I would really liked to know what those parts of the brain do as a clue as to why we might have needed to expand them.

Now we get into the meat of the subject, which is the notion that the hemispheres are divided so that we can both focus in on what we are looking for or doing and still have half our brains dedicated to the sort of ready-for-anything broad focus that monitoring our environment for threats requires.

This makes sense to me. In the state of nature, you cannot afford to get so absorbed in your focus task that you do not notice the predator sneaking up on you. On the other hand, if you are completely unable to focus because every little stimulus from your environment distracts you, you are never going to be able to concentrate well enough to complete complex tasks which require focus like finding food or hunting.

Regarding the specific brain which is typing these words for you to read, I would definitely come down really strongly on the focus half of the equation. I can become entirely absorbed in a book, a video game, a conversation, writing, or even just thinking my own thoughts.

On the other hand, I pay almost no attention to my surroundings. In the state of nature I would be sabretooth chow on my first day out. Even if I was hunting (something I dearly hope I never have to do), I would get so wrapped up in tracking my prey (or just daydreaming) that a wolf could just casually saunter up to me and start chewing on my leg and I wouldn’t even notice until the third bite.

So like I have always thought ever since I learned about this whole split brain stuff, I am left-brained to a very high degree.

I just consider myself fortunate to also have a very good relationship with my subconscious mind and thus also have a great deal of creativity.

My corpus callosum is constantly abuzz with information and reasoning passing between the two hemispheres.

Then we get to the frontal lobe, which from what I gather from McGilchrist functions as our detachment center, the part of the brain that lets us step back from the situation and give our higher reasoning functions a chance to operate, and not just act on instinct or reflex.

If so, one could make the argument that it is a highly human part of the brain. Even our close cousins the chimps do not spend a lot of time thinking about things. They are capable of reasoning, but it is more like the reasoning of an active child who learns by trying things out constantly.

I find it very illuminating to learn that it is my underdeveloped right hemisphere that deals with empathy and connection to others. I wonder what that implies for us left brained types? it seems to me that a lot of us have trouble connecting to others. When it gets really bad, we end up on the autism spectrum, with narrowly focused minds oblivious to larger contexts and unable to even understand the motivations of others on the most basic level.

I suppose the opposite of this would be someone who has amazing interpersonal skills who connects with and relates to others easily, but is confounded by even the simplest of focus tasks like screwing in a light bulb or paying their bills.

I will not get into the philosophical issues McGilchrist gets into nearish the end of his speech. Let’s just say that as a philosopher, McGilchrist makes an excellent psychiatrist.

Human beings have never been freer or happier, Doc. Things have never been better. Don’t let the anecdotal blind you to the big picture. Overall, the human race has never had it so good and the trend is clearly that things will keep improving for at least the near future.

The ride is bumpy, but that doesn’t mean we are not getting anywhere.