A Glimpse of Tommy McHugh's Brain

On that right-left view, the right side is the holistic, artistic, musical side, with the left brain being specialized for language, calculations, and data collection. That view grew out of work done with “split-brain” patients in the 1960’s. Those patients had had surgical operations to control severe epilepsy, which cut the connection between the left hemisphere and right hemisphere. After their surgery, the patients had a number of mild but complex problems. One of them was that their imaginations were flat, uncreative.

Scientific findings about left brain-right brain specialization were taken up by the popular press, and greatly overgeneralized. The left and right sides of the brain are indeed specialized for different skills—notably the left brain is much better at language. But creative people and trained artists are more likely to use both sides of their brains for creative tasks. You need to use as much of your brain as possible to make something truly new.

Tommy adopted a split-brain view of his new perceptions and interests because his new self felt divided in many ways. But they are, I think, different ways from the standard left brain/right brain view. One of his splits was between his old and new ways of being in the world. Another was an interesting problem he had for months after his brain bleed. That was a perceptual change called a left neglect syndrome. For Tommy at first, the left side of his visual world was nearly gone. For that reason, many of his earlier drawings were of faces that were shrunken on the left. During her research fellowship, she wrote The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain an award-winning nonfiction book about the way the brain drives creativity. The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of the best books of 2004. To purchase this fantastic book please click on the Amazon link bellow Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5 | Page 6 | Page 7

Web design by Bynxy ©