VII. Our Earthuman Ascent: A Major Evolutionary Transition in Twndividuality

3. A Complementary Brain and Thought Process: A Family Mind

Hugdahl, Kenneth and Rene Westerhausen, eds. The Two Halves of the Brain Information Processing in the Cerebral Hemispheres. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. The editors are biological and medical psychologists at the University of Bergen, Norway. The volume is a broad review and update upon this cerebral complementary microcosm that influences every aspects of our lives. Eight sections cover Genetic and Evolutionary Perspectives, Hemispheric Asymmetry in Nonmammalian Species, Neuroimaging, Hormones, Sex Differences, and Sleep Asymmetry, Asymmetry of Perception, Asymmetry of Cognition, Neurological and Pediatric Disorders, and Asymmetry in Schizophrenia and Psychosis.

Iturria-Medina, Yasser, et al. Brain Hemispheric Structural Efficiency and Interconnectivity Rightward Asymmetry in Human and Nonhuman Primates. Cerebral Cortex. 21/1, 2011. After decades of worldwide study, a team of neuroscientists from Cuba, Chile, England, Spain, and Germany further confirm the presence of complementary halves and archetypal attributes of a left detailed focus and right holistic survey that braces our neural and cognitive capacity. As an epochal advance, it begs the grand discovery of this yang masculine and yin feminine universal microcosm in our own brains, and equally Earthwide west and east, north and south, with an Islamic corpus callosum. And if we individually and globally might press on to our own knowledge, which this website seeks to document, what wondrous, saving witness might appear for we peoples altogether?

Evidence for interregional structural asymmetries has been previously reported for brain anatomic regions supporting well-described functional lateralization. Here, we aimed to investigate whether the two brain hemispheres demonstrate dissimilar general structural attributes implying different principles on information flow management. Common left hemisphere/right hemisphere structural network properties are estimated and compared for right-handed healthy human subjects and a nonhuman primate, by means of 3 different diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging fiber tractography algorithms and a graph theory framework. In both the human and the nonhuman primate, the data support the conclusion that, in terms of the graph framework, the right hemisphere is significantly more efficient and interconnected than the left hemisphere, whereas the left hemisphere presents more central or indispensable regions for the whole-brain structural network than the right hemisphere. From our point of view, in terms of functional principles, this pattern could be related with the fact that the left hemisphere has a leading role for highly demanding specific process, such as language and motor actions, which may require dedicated specialized networks, whereas the right hemisphere has a leading role for more general process, such as integration tasks, which may require a more general level of interconnection. (Abstract, 56)

Ivry, Richard and Lynn Robertson. The Two Sides of Perception. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998. Three decades of theory and experiment affirms a holistic propensity for the right brain hemisphere and a discrete, narrower focus in the left. With regard to connecting dots, the right side glimpses the whole but misses its necessary points while the left notes all the separate dots with no idea that they make up an image.

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. The emeritus Princeton University behavioral psychologist and 2002 Nobel laureate in economics offers a popular, chatty exposition of the dual process school of thought as due to Seymour Epstein, Jonathan Evans (search) and others.

In recent years an exciting body of work has emerged from various quarters devoted to exploring the idea that there is a fundamental duality in the human mind. (1) Typically, one of the processes is characterized as fast, effortless, automatic, nonconscious, inflexible, heavily contextualized, and undemanding of working memory, and the other as slow, effortful, controlled, conscious, flexible, decontextualized, and demanding of working memory. (1)

Keenan, Julian. The Face in the Mirror. New York: Harper Collins, 2003. A neuroscientist expands upon Gordon Gallup’s mirror recognition test as a measure of self-identity by adding neuro-imaging studies along with other recent findings. From this synthesis the conclusion is drawn that the right brain, rather than of minor account, is the seat of self-awareness and consciousness. The condition of autism whence a child is unable to develop a “Theory of Mind” that other persons have their own thoughts is then attributed to an absence of this faculty. Keenan goes on to propose a recapitulation between the ontogeny of how a child’s motor skills and cognitive abilities such as the 2nd year onset of self-recognition develop and the evolutionary phylogeny of their acquisition by primates, hominids and human beings.

Kokis, Judith, et al. Heuristic and Analytical Processing. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 83/1, 2002. Studies of the “dual-process model” of distinct heuristic (holistic) or analytical (serial, discrete) cognitive styles with regard to their sequential appearance in children appear to confirm this hypothesis. Although the twin faculties are not equated with brain hemispheres their alignment with right and left is evident.

Thus, it is assumed in dual-process theories that the heuristic system is an older evolutionary product. A corollary of this assumption is that the heuristic system is also ontogenetically earlier developing – and that the analytic system is both a phylogenetically and ontogenetically later developing system. (27-28)

Kong, Xiang-Zhen, et al. Mapping Cortical Brain Asymmetry in 17,141 Healthy Individuals Worldwide via the ENIGMA Consortium. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115/E5154, 2018. A report from this newly formed European, American, and global collaboration (see second quote) which stands as the most comprehensive neuroimaging study of human cerebral asymmetric hemispheres to date. While the emphasis has been mainly on brain anatomies, the complementary archetypes of linguistic detail and contextual field complements remain broadly constant.

Hemispheric asymmetry is a cardinal feature of human brain organization. Here, the ENIGMA (Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis) Consortium presents the largest-ever analysis of cerebral cortical asymmetry and its variability across individuals. Cortical thickness and surface area were assessed in MRI scans of 17,141 healthy individuals from 99 datasets worldwide. Results revealed widespread asymmetries at both hemispheric and regional levels, with a generally thicker cortex but smaller surface area in the left hemisphere relative to the right. The structural asymmetries identified and their variabilities and heritability provide a reference resource for future studies on the genetic basis of brain asymmetry and altered laterality in cognitive, neurological, and psychiatric disorders. (Abstract)

The ENIGMA Consortium is an international effort by leaders worldwide. The Network brings together researchers in imaging genomics, neurology and psychiatry, to understand brain structure and function, based on MRI, DTI, fMRI, genetic data and many patient populations. The ENIGMA Lateralization group aims to identify common genetic variants that influence left-right asymmetrical aspects of brain structure and function. Lateralization is an important organizing feature of the human brain yet its genetic and developmental basis is almost completely unknown. Language-related cerebral cortical regions and white matter tracts are well known to be structurally and functionally lateralized, with left-hemisphere dominance for language in the majority of people. Visuospatial cognition and hand motor control are also strongly lateralized. (Website)

Kosslyn, Stephen. Where is the “Spatial” Hemisphere? Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia, et al, eds. The Cognitive Neuroscience of Mind. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. The Harvard University psychologist provides for this Gazzaniga festschrift a synthesis of his years of research upon asymmetrical cerebral attributes, with this unique insight. Our visual perception of global patterns is actually composed of two aspects – discrete categorical or integrally coordinate – which then align with the left or right hemispheres. So once again, as so many endeavors coalesce upon and affirm circa 2010, these archetypal modes and their relative lateral locales indeed gains real confirmation.

Kraus, Nina. Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2021. A senior Northwestern University neurobiologist writes her comprehensive opus about how the soundverse we abide in effects every aspect of our lives. Akin to bifocal vision, it is binaural with ear modulations that favor either discrete phonetics or rhythmic, tonal pitch. Once again, nature’s universal sensory system is found to ever recur in kind. (See Brainstem Origins for Cortical ‘What’ and ’Where” Pathways in the Auditory System by NK and Trent Nicol in Trends in Neuroscience. (28/4, 2005.)

Laland, Kevin, et al. The Evolution of Dance. Current Biology. 26/1, 2016. Senior behavioral scholars Laland, University of St. Andrews, with Clive Wilkins, and Nicky Clayton, Cambridge University contribute to later 2010s realizations of the long, intertwined reciprocal occasion of rhythmic motion and linguistic content. A constant, vital interplay of an integral reciprocity of motion and message can now be filled in and traced across the array of Metazoan animals.

Senior behavioral scholars Laland, University of St. Andrews, with Clive Wilkins, and Nicky Clayton, Cambridge University contribute to later 2010s realizations of the long, intertwined reciprocal occasion of rhythmic motion and linguistic content. A constant, vital interplay of an integral reciprocity of motion and message can now be filled in and traced across the array of Metazoan animals.

Levitin, Daniel, et al. The Psychology of Music Rhythm and Movement. Annual Review of Psychology. 69/51, 2017. As studies of life’s vital duality of movement and communication advance, they lately merit this Annual Review chapter by psychologists Levitin, McGill University, Jessica Grahn, Western University, Ontario, and Justin London, Carleton College. Section headings such as Tempo and Temporal Structure, Synchronization, Embodied Cognition, Groove, and Cross-Modal Correspondences convey scholarly features as they explain life’s score and script.

The urge to move to music is universal among humans. Unlike visual art, which is manifest across space, music is manifest across time. When listeners get carried away by the music, either through movement (such as dancing) or through reverie (such as trance), it is usually the temporal qualities of the music — its pulse, tempo, and rhythmic patterns — that put them in this state. In this article, we review studies addressing rhythm, meter, movement, synchronization, entrainment, the perception of groove, and other temporal factors that constitute a first step to understanding how and why music literally moves us. The experiments we review span a range of methodological techniques, including neuroimaging, psychophysics, and traditional behavioral experiments, and we also summarize the current studies of animal synchronization, engaging an evolutionary perspective on human rhythmic perception and cognition. (Abstract)

Li, Mike, et al. Transitions in Information Processing Dynamics at the Whole-Brain Network Level are Driven by Alterations in Neural Gain. PLoS Computational Biology. Online October, 2019. University of Sydney, Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Queensland, and Stanford University systems neuroscientists including Joseph Lizier provide another window upon how and why cerebral cognition proceeds by way of an active sequence and balance of bringing together and moving apart, which conceives a one and/or many optimum complementarity.

A key component of the complex flexibility of the brain is its ability to adapt its functional network structure between integrated and segregated brain states. Integrated states are prevalent for tasks such as maintaining items in memory, consistent with models of a global workspace architecture. Recent work has suggested that the balance between integration and segregation is under the control of ascending neuromodulatory systems, via changes in neural gain. In this study, we show that the gain-mediated phase transition involves the dynamics of the subcritical (segregated) regime for information storage, whereas the supercritical (integrated) regime is associated with information transfer. Operating near to the critical regime with respect to modulating neural gain parameter appears to provide computational advantages which offer flexibility in the information processing. (Abstract excerpt)

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