Dwayne Godwin is a neuroscientist at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Jorge Cham draws the comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper at www.phdcomics.com.
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| March 12, 2013 | 9
Dwayne Godwin is a neuroscientist at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Jorge Cham draws the comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper at www.phdcomics.com.
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9 Comments
Add CommentOne side (one helix) of the DNA double helix goes backwards. In the same way, one side of our brain is opposite to the other. This is an important and I think very overlooked aspect of our being. One side of our brain is backwards to the other. Without the two hemispheres being connected, they probably both experience very different worlds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah man, even with a hemispherectomy you can still understand The ESPN commentators.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm of two minds on that.... Er, I seem to be of two minds on almost everything! It could be good a good thing for the two halves to be in contradiction at times. Perhaps the exercise in negotiation between the two halves helps define the world multidimensionally.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think only one brain hemisphere experiences time moving forward. The other hemisphere, being backwards, experiences time as being stopped. Their combination derives for us the periodicity of time we perceive, which is anything but uniform if we are honest about how it really feels to us. Space, I believe, is inverted as well to one of the hemispheres.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll of this is just concerning how we experience things, which is an activity that takes place inside our mind bearing little necessity of resemblance to anything, really, that is external to us.
The tests they've done with the split-brain people show the two hemispheres may as well each be on different planets.
Experiments done with inverted glasses show that the brain could actually cover up something very strange like that, and we'd never know it.
Perhaps within the Corpus Callosum exists a quantum link that connects two minds who exist in separate but parallel universes.
There are some interesting speculations about conflicting approaches to the same existential situation in 'normal' virtual hemispherectomies. I have been developing this theme as part of a consoliation of my BPS Model of brain dynamics. See: <http://angelldls.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/controlling-the-self-deceptive-syndrome/> and subsequent discussions including one the will appear tomorrow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFull explanation of split-brain behavior on whatismind.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have three distinct yet mutually interdependent brains that seek a mutual balance. The brain not mentioned is the primitive Limbic brain which fuels emotionally patterned energy for thought and behavior. The left and right hemispheres of the new part of the brain are like screens on which emotional coloring is projected. The mute intuitive right hemisphere in most people is holistic and seeks to timelessly integrate experience as a meaningful whole. We all need theories of everything even if it, or they, are flawed or fractured. The left hemisphere in most of us is language bound and linear. It is socially oriented and deals with the passing flux of circumstance. Apart from relatively few anomolies this is the general pattern. The pattern elborates within itself recurring in each hemisphere. There is a much simplified article on how this works at http://www.cosmic-mindreach.com/Three-Brains.html. There are adavanced articles on how the human nervous system meaningfully integrates experience synapse by synapse at http://www.cosmic-mindreach.com/System4_Sequence_Steps.html.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn ancient Indian psychical and yogic litarature,as well as the Ayurveda and Sidha systems,there is a mention of three central systems or core parts for the brain-one is focussed on the imagistic representation of the world in mind,the other one related to the self and its sense of bodily consciousness or differentiation from the other in the universe,and the last one related to a sense of integration and unitariness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe studies reported in mainstream science about Eastern meditation also point towards it.
Inhibition of stream of consciousness states of self systems and ego consciousness causes a less subjective and more objective perception of an oceanic kind of reality,beyond the differentiation based on self consciousness.
That has been described as pure consciousness characterised by an absence of thinking and self reference,and with a sense of unitariness and integral self.The ancient Indians referred to it as the mystic mind and accessed through a perception-meditation continuum[based on esotericx yogic and sazen internalised breathing methods and meditative mentation.].
This continuum in brain is towards the right of the perception-emotion-hallucination continuum connected with our usual ergotropic states of ego and self consciousness or its cognitve states in dreaming sleep and wakeful thought.
In deep sleep we attain a state similar to that of eastern meditation ,with a subdued subjective awareness and its sympathetic tone[in sleep of the slow wave kind there is no awareness whereas in Estern meditation there is increased awareness.
The awareness of a less subjective kind in pure consciousness is related to an active anterior cingulate cortical [ACC] control of the parasympathetic component of ANS.This goes along with inhibited brain activity and its default network of usual ego and self states and its subjective awaress and sympathetic tone associated with awareness.
ACC is associated with interphased cogniton and emotion.
Hence the aim of brain in synchronisation appears to be a balance of ergotropic and tropotrophic states of action and receptor modes,during cognitve states.
But our right continuum in brain linked to percpetion -meditation continuum is usually not developed by the right kind of practice,since much of the stress is on intellectual develoment
Prof SureshKumar.S,Chief Scientist and Adviser,CSIR-NIIST,Trivandrum,Kerala,India
I did this surgery on rats (albino) in 1962 -64. Unfortunately it was not published...
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