Neuropsychology of the Cerebral Hemispheres
The Psychology of Awakening January 1, 2025 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-06290-1_2 (opens in new tab) via Springer Nature
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractHumans have at least two fundamental ways of perceiving reality, associated with the left and right hemispheres. The left hemisphere adeptly re-presents reality into symbols, aiding goal-directed behaviors but potentially harming mental health through rigid language use and narrow attention that fails to contextualize information. The right hemisphere supports globalized, novel, and contextualized views focused on nonreductive analysis. Neither hemispheric view adequately conceptualizes ultimate reality, so maintaining balance is crucial. Attention, primarily linked to right-hemisphere functions, is discussed along with neural mechanisms, types of attention, and a basic working model, with the premise that training attention enables deeper realizations of reality.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Left hemisphere Right hemisphere Contextual Focused attention Executive attention |
| Key finding | Argues that the left hemisphere's symbolic, goal-oriented processing and the right hemisphere's global, contextualized processing both offer incomplete views of reality, and that training attention, primarily a right-hemisphere function, is key to deeper realizations of reality. |
Abstract
Neuropsychological functions of the left and right hemispheres Right hemispheres are discussed with the purpose of showing that humans have at least two fundamental ways of perceiving reality. The left hemisphere Left hemisphere is argued to be adept at re-presenting reality into symbols, which makes reality easier to manipulate for goal-directed behaviors Behaviors . The trade-off is that mental health Mental health can suffer through adherence to language Language , fixation on narrow ways to attend to information, and the tendency for functions associated with the left hemisphere Left hemisphere to not contextualize information. The right hemisphere Right hemispheres is involved with globalized, novel, and contextualized Contextualized views of reality, which are more focused on nonreductive information analysis. An argument is made that both hemispheric views of reality are inadequate to positively conceptualize the nature of ultimate reality, so maintaining a balance between both sets of functions is most important. Attention, which is primarily associated with functions of the right hemisphere Right hemispheres , is also discussed. Underlying neural mechanisms, types of attention, and a basic working model of attention are all given with the premise that training attention is a primary psychological mechanism that allows for deeper realizations of what reality is (or is not).