2007-03-29
Storyteller
Telling stories is an important part of our life. It’s a daily activity I wrote about before. See Stories and The emperors new clothes. Now, I just came across some interesting research. Dr. Michael Gazzaniga has located our storyteller in the left hemisphere of the brain. In his research with split-brain patients he discovered that they would tell stories with facts that were known by the left brain and made up a story for the actions done by the right brain.
Dr. Gazzaniga and Dr. LeDoux showed P.S. a picture of a chicken claw in his right eye and a snow-covered house in the left eye. P.S. pointed to a chicken with his right hand and a snow shovel with his left.
''I'll never forget the day we got around to asking P.S., 'Why did you do that?''' said Dr. Gazzaniga. ''He said, 'The chicken claw goes with the chicken.' That's all the left hemisphere saw. And then he looks at the shovel and said, 'The reason you need a shovel is to clean out the chicken shed.'''
Dr. Gazzaniga hypothesized that P.S.'s left hemisphere made up a story to explain his actions, based on the limited information it received. Dr. Gazzaniga and his colleagues have carried out the same experiment hundreds of times since, and the left hemisphere has consistently acted this way.
''The interpreter tells the story line of a person,'' Dr. Gazzaniga said. ''It's collecting all the information that is in all these separate systems that are distributed through the brain.'' While the story feels like an unfiltered picture of reality, it's just a quickly-thrown-together narrative.
Experiments on split-brain patients reveal how readily the left brain interpreter can make up stories and beliefs. In one experiment, for example, when the word walk was presented only to the right side of a patient’s brain, he got up and started walking. When he was asked why he did this, the left brain (where language is stored and where the word walk was not presented) quickly created a reason for the action: 'I wanted to go get a Coke.'
So storytelling is on the left side. It’s generating an ‘afterthought’. But does this also imply that our cognition and our consciousness are in this same area? Is all linguistic processing in this area? What about this woman who could still write with her left hand.
Kathleen B. Baynes of the University of California at Davis reports another unique case. A left-handed patient spoke out of her left brain after split-brain surgery - not a surprising finding in itself. But the patient could write only out of her right, nonspeaking hemisphere. This dissociation confirms the idea that the capacity to write need not be associated with the capacity for phonological representation. Put differently, writing appears to be an independent system, an invention of the human species. It can stand alone and does not need to be part of our inherited spoken language system.
Did her writing still have a storyline? Or was she just writing down what she heard? It could be that the story telling is not specific for the left. But that only the speech part is. That is not really surprising. It would give problems if both hemispheres control speech. That would be speech with a double tongue.
Ah!! Still so many questions. But I getting more convinced that our storyteller is important to give meaning to our life. Or is it just telling stories, because it is the only thing it can do. Just like apples falling from the tree? Life has a meaning, because the storyteller tell so?
Dr. Gazzaniga and Dr. LeDoux showed P.S. a picture of a chicken claw in his right eye and a snow-covered house in the left eye. P.S. pointed to a chicken with his right hand and a snow shovel with his left.
''I'll never forget the day we got around to asking P.S., 'Why did you do that?''' said Dr. Gazzaniga. ''He said, 'The chicken claw goes with the chicken.' That's all the left hemisphere saw. And then he looks at the shovel and said, 'The reason you need a shovel is to clean out the chicken shed.'''
Dr. Gazzaniga hypothesized that P.S.'s left hemisphere made up a story to explain his actions, based on the limited information it received. Dr. Gazzaniga and his colleagues have carried out the same experiment hundreds of times since, and the left hemisphere has consistently acted this way.
''The interpreter tells the story line of a person,'' Dr. Gazzaniga said. ''It's collecting all the information that is in all these separate systems that are distributed through the brain.'' While the story feels like an unfiltered picture of reality, it's just a quickly-thrown-together narrative.
Experiments on split-brain patients reveal how readily the left brain interpreter can make up stories and beliefs. In one experiment, for example, when the word walk was presented only to the right side of a patient’s brain, he got up and started walking. When he was asked why he did this, the left brain (where language is stored and where the word walk was not presented) quickly created a reason for the action: 'I wanted to go get a Coke.'
From The Ethical Brain by Michael Gazzaniga
So storytelling is on the left side. It’s generating an ‘afterthought’. But does this also imply that our cognition and our consciousness are in this same area? Is all linguistic processing in this area? What about this woman who could still write with her left hand.
Kathleen B. Baynes of the University of California at Davis reports another unique case. A left-handed patient spoke out of her left brain after split-brain surgery - not a surprising finding in itself. But the patient could write only out of her right, nonspeaking hemisphere. This dissociation confirms the idea that the capacity to write need not be associated with the capacity for phonological representation. Put differently, writing appears to be an independent system, an invention of the human species. It can stand alone and does not need to be part of our inherited spoken language system.
From The Split Brain Revisited by Michael S. Gazzaniga
Did her writing still have a storyline? Or was she just writing down what she heard? It could be that the story telling is not specific for the left. But that only the speech part is. That is not really surprising. It would give problems if both hemispheres control speech. That would be speech with a double tongue.
Ah!! Still so many questions. But I getting more convinced that our storyteller is important to give meaning to our life. Or is it just telling stories, because it is the only thing it can do. Just like apples falling from the tree? Life has a meaning, because the storyteller tell so?
2007-03-28
ITHAKA
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that one on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfumes of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean
Constantine P. Cavafy
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that one on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfumes of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean
Constantine P. Cavafy
