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As a result of these extraordinary findings over the past fifteen years, we now know that despite our normal feeling that we are one person—a single being—our brains are double, each half with its own way of knowing, its own way of perceiving external reality. In a manner of speaking, each of us has two minds, two consciousnesses, mediated and integrated by the connecting cable of nerve fibers between the hemispheres.

We have learned that the two hemispheres can work together in a number of ways. Sometimes they cooperate with each half contributing its special abilities and taking on the particular part of the task that is suited to its mode of information processing. At other times, the hemispheres can work singly, with one mode more or less “leading,” the other more or less “following.” And it seems that the hemispheres may also conflict, one half attempting to do what the other half “knows” it can do better. Furthermore, it may be that each hemisphere has a way of keeping knowledge from the other hemisphere. It may be, as the saying goes, that the right hand truly does not know what the left hand is doing.

The double reality of split-brain patients

But what, you might ask, does all this have to do with learning how to draw? Research on brain-hemisphere aspects of visual perception indicates that ability to draw may depend on whether you can access at conscious level the “minor,” or subdominant, R-mode. How does this help a person to draw? It appears that the right brain perceives—processes visual information—in a mode suitable for drawing, and that the left-brain mode of functioning may be inappropriate for complex realistic drawing of perceived forms.

Language clues

In hindsight, we realize that human beings must have had some sense of the differences between the halves of the brain. Languages worldwide contain numerous words and phrases suggesting that the left side of a person has different characteristics from the right side. These terms indicate not just differences in location but differences in fundamental traits or qualities. For example, if we want to compare unlike ideas, we say, “On the one hand ... on the other hand...” “A left-handed compliment,” meaning a sly dig, indicates the differing qualities we assign to left and right.

Keep in mind, however, that these phrases generally speak of hands, but because of the crossover connections of hands and hemispheres, the terms can be inferred also to mean the hemispheres that control the hands. Therefore, the examples of familiar terms in the next section refer specifically to the left and right hands but in reality also refer inferentially to the opposite brain halves—the left hand controlled by the right hemisphere, the right hand by the left hemisphere.

The bias of language and customs

Words and phrases concerning concepts of left and right permeate our language and thinking. The right hand (meaning also the left hemisphere) is strongly connected with what is good, just, moral, and proper. The left hand (therefore the right hemisphere) is strongly linked with concepts of anarchy and feelings that are out of conscious control—somehow bad, immoral, and dangerous.

Nasrudin was sitting with a friend as dusk fell. “Light a candle,” the man said, “because it is dark now. There is one just by your left side.” “How can I tell my right from my left in the dark, you fool?” asked the Mulla.

—Indries Shah

The Exploits of the

Incomparable Mulla

Nasrudin

Until very recently, the ancient bias against the left hand/ right hemisphere sometimes even led parents and teachers of left-handed children to try to force the children to use their right hands for writing, eating, and so on—a practice that often caused problems lasting into adulthood.

Throughout human history, terms with connotations of good for the right hand/left hemisphere and connotations of bad for the left hand/right hemisphere appear in most languages around the world. The Latin word for left is sinister, meaning “bad,” “ominous,” “treacherous.” The Latin