Lectures for a New Year: The Divided Brain

In this eleven-minute animation, psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist explains how our notion of the hemispheres of the brain being ultra-separate is a drastic oversimplification, and has had consequences for how we think about our behavior, our culture, and our society. This talk complements Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's talk (posted in this series two weeks back), in which she discusses the profoundly different minds present in her own hemispheres -- and how she experienced the world differently during and after her stroke. McGilchrist comes across in this condensed animation as exceedingly academic -- I frankly felt a bit lost at times -- which is why, under 'Bonus Points' below, I've included the somewhat longer original talk, which isn't condensed, and thus does a better job of making these points without hurrying. My advice: if you watch this animation and find it intriguing but confusing, just switch to the next video. You'll get a lot out of it.

Topics: why the brain isn't actually symmetrical, how and why the frontal lobe inhibits us, empathy, why "simpler is better," lefties and tool use, the Berlusconi of the brain, how our society puts incorrect values on different types of thinking, and how you must use both sides of the brain each task...even if one side is "dominant" in that arena.

For: people willing to devote their full attention to this talk's super-smart/super-dense content; you might want to go ahead and watch the half-hour version (which isn't quite as densely packed).

Viewing Note: the video is very detailed; you might want to go fullscreen and turn on HD.

Representative quote:

[Initially quoting Einstein:] "'The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant.' We have created a society that honors the servant but has forgotten the gift."

Further Reading

McGilchrist wrote a book on this subject called The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. There's an incredible Wikipedia page summarizing the book.

Transcript

Oddly, I couldn't find a transcript of this video, though other RSA talks have nice PDF transcripts and even dotSUB transcripts. Anybody out there have better luck?

Bonus Points

Here's the original half-hour RSA talk from which this animation was produced. I was taken by this YouTube comment:

Perhaps it's germane to the topic that I cannot grasp this lecture when it is presented in the RSA Animate way...too dense, too? distracting, too tightly edited and rapid. When Machiavelli is mentioned, I know the connotation intended, to have a tiny picture of Machiavelli drawn for me at the same time is irrelevant. This pertains to the lecture point about the utility of a map when one doesn't need/want to know all information about the area. To come watch the original lecture was a relief. -clif9710

Suggest a Lecture

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