“What’s With Left & Right Brain?”
• 1. “I’m confused, professor. Is there a left & right brain dominance? Which is better?”
• 2. “The answer is too important to leave it to “educators”, who like things complicated, so they have a job explaining intentionally, abstract ideas. My cousin Albert said, ‘if you can’t explain your idea to a smart six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
• 3. “Personally, I like baby-easy examples, analogies or metaphors that I can visual & remember for the future.”
• 4. “Cousin Albert also said, “Educators think using ‘examples’ is one-way to teach students – skills & principles. They are wrong. It is the ‘only-way’ students & you & me, understand & remember complicated ideas.”
• 5. “Start with Left & Right brain differences, prof.”
• 6. “Step one: our brain is really two-brains, each half has
different functions, and controls the opposite side of the body. Ex. Your left-brain controls the entire right-side of your body, & vice-versa.
• 8. “Your left-brain is verbal & uses language to communicate, while your right-brain is 95% non-verbal,
& loves imagery (pictures), feelings, and associations (links). Oh yeah, Righty lives for ACTION & movement.”
• 9. “Which half controls Memory?”
• 10. “Memory is a multi-tasker. Your Hippocampus (< Greek For Seahorse) encodes ideas for working-memory,
& works with the limbic (emotions) system & Pre-Frontal Cortex for retrieval of those memories.
• 11. “Specialization means either left or right brain is Dominant. That could be as little as 51% vs 49%, to 90% vs 10%. Guess who calls the shots?”
• 12. “Yeah, but a good example?”
• 13. “Your left-brain controls typing, surfing the internet, and speech, while Righty runs Images, experiences, your feelings & even Music. Artists are right-brain dominant.”
• 14. “You may Not be able to directly communicate “verbally” (left-brain), like Dr. Stephen Hawking, but your right-brain is creating original & brilliant ideas. Remember this: Answer: Seventy-Eight. Question: how-many organs in the Human body. It’s left-brained.
• 15. “Tell me more.”
• 16. “Your Left-Brain is constantly ‘pruning’ (dumps) old information not used. Righty (Subconscious Mind) stores for life all your ‘sensory’ experiences mostly in your Hippocampus. You can remember at will your 5th birthday party. Want more?”
• 17. “They really are different. Do they talk to each other?”
• 18. “The switchboard is called the Corpus Callosum (< Latin for hard-body. Intuition is right-brained, diagrams too. Lefty specializes in planning, reading, learning skills,
All things ‘linear’. Righty runs ‘vertically’.
• 19. “What’s linear or vertical got to do with learning?”
• 20. “School-taught reading (one-word at a time), is linear,
across the line. Slow as molasses. SpeedReading101 is vertical, meaning your eyes move Down-the-page. You use your peripheral-vision and see & understand up to 5-6 words at a time. And it sticks in long-term memory.
• 21. “More differences, please.”
• 22. “Intuition is right-brain dominant. Logic & reason, left-brained. Spatial-acuity, seeing in 3-D, movements in space are Righty. Math is left, while architecture is ‘right’.”
• 23. “What about an orchestra?”
• 24. “They got perfect pitch & work together. Righty!
Add your ability for math calculation without analysis or
Left-brain thinking. You just spit it out from Righty! You know the multiplication table by heart. Righty!
• 25. “Imagination is Right-Brain dominant? And facts and statistics, are left? Wait. Right-brain specializes in Pattern-Recognition?”
• 26. “Right-on. Please understand this. You can spend your life being almost exclusively left-brained, like a scientist or mathematician.
• Others are artists, authors, or economists, 24/7. Both groups are equally true and valuable. Still, Brainiacs like my cousin Albert, who won the Nobel in 1921 for physics,
use both left & right brains, to complement each other.”
• 27. “Take-away: thinking scientifically means doing mind-experiments, and using your logic, reason, & planning.
• Thinking “artfully”, creatively & imaginatively,
means valuing your right-brain ‘intuition’, ‘feelings’, & ‘insights’. Our society is up to 75% Left-Brained, & distrusts our Emotions & intuition. Brainiacs use BOTH.”
See ya,
Copyright © 2013, Bernard Wechsler
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bernard Wechsler, Director of Education, SpeedReading101.org
My original business partner was Evelyn Wood, creator of speed reading, who graduated 2-million, including the White House staffs of four U.S. Presidents. Author and creator of memory and learning programs. Contact me at hbw@speedlearning.org to
answer any questions.