Chapter 13

Cerebral asymmetries
and their consequences We have seen that the history of the evolution of matter is, in both the inanimate and living worlds, the history of a series of symmetry breakings. The chiral molecules built into the fundamental cornerstones of the living organism set the path of further breakings of symmetry in the course of phylogenesis. The asymmetry of the right-twisting DNA molecule was the precursor of a number of molecular consequences, and other symmetry breakings affected living creatures either indirectly or as the result of a combination of external inuences. If we examine our own bodies, we see that we are aware of a good number of morphological asymmetries. Most particularly that of the heart, whose asymmetric development in the course of phylogenesis has become the subject for school textbooks. In the course of its development, the heart did not, thanks to the function it was required to perform, have either rotational symmetric or mirror symmetric alternatives. Let us compare a modern, essentially schematic, anatomical textbook drawing with Leonardos artistic drawing of the human bodys internal organs (Figure 13.1). According to Aristotle, human beings are much more beautifully formed than animals, because the symmetry of the various parts of the human body are more marked than those of animals. From the outside this certainly seems to be true. The asymmetric location of the heart in our bodies also affects the location of other organs. The morphological asymmetry causes functional asymmetry in the blood supply. We can easily convince ourselves of this if we measure the blood pressure in each of our arms: we will reliably nd that the value for our right arm is higher. The semicircular aorta does not bifurcate into the vessels symmetrically, and so the turbulent blood reaches the various arteries at different pressures. The situation is similar with the other artery pairs.

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Figure 13.1. Leonardos drawing of the human bodys internal organs

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It is possible that the blood supply played a role in the development of human cerebral asymmetries; it is possible that its role was only secondary. Today we are not able to decide for certain. Like many phenomena that we have long been aware of, the reason for the development of the cerebral asymmetries belongs to the more mysterious chapters of symmetry breakings. The functional separation of the two hemispheres of the brain is one of the most well-known asymmetric phenomena. The most obvious sign of it is the dominance of right-handedness. Thanks to the analysis of injuries, we have also long known that the speech centre and the motor centre are located in the left frontal lobe. The rst direct proof of this to achieve widespread renown was provided in 1861 by French doctor Paul Broca (18241880), when he reported to the French Anthropological Society on how he had discovered injuries in the frontal lobe of some of his patients who had lost their ability to speak after a stroke. Four years later, at the same place, Broca also announced that the speech motor centre is localized in the left hemisphere. We owe it to historical accuracy to mention that although Broca was unaware of this Marc Dax (17701837) had already reported on his observations in Montpellier in 1836, according to which the injury of his patients who lost their ability to speak was always to the left cerebral hemisphere, though it is true that he did not localize it more specically. Thus since Dax we have known that the two hemispheres of the brain control different functions. It was Broca who went on to relate right-handedness to the left hemisphere. And we have known of the crossover of nerve bres since Hippocrates (c. 460377 BC). In 1874, German neurologist Karl Wernicke (18481904) determined that it is not only the motor speech centre, but also the auditory speech centre that is in the left cerebral hemisphere more precisely in the upper part of the left temporal lobe and is thus found separate from the motor speech centre, which is located in the rear area of the frontal lobe. If the auditory centre is injured separately, the power of speech is retained, but loses its comprehensibility. Interestingly, it was another hundred years before the functions associated with the right cerebral hemisphere were identied. The right and left hemispheres of the human cortex also show slight morphological deviation: we stress that is only true for human beings, and

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only for the cortex which developed in the later stages of evolution. All evidence suggests that the morphological deviations are the result rather than the cause of the functions specialized for one hemisphere or the other. The arrows on Figure 13.2 show certain such minor deviations.

Figure 13.2.

About 90 per cent of people use their right hand to perform actions that require considerable skill. Various theories of differing scientic thoroughness have arisen to explain the development of right-handedness, but it would be early to make a nal decision on the correctness of even for the most solid of these. The best-established theories agree, at least, that right-handedness developed in stages along the road to becoming human beings, and in connection to learning to walk on two legs. For apelike primates, the hand was freed, and eyes that were closer together made spatial awareness more rened. Manipulative activity combined with vision is a property exclusive to primates. The basis for the exploration of space with hands was provided in both cerebral hemispheres by the inferior parietal lobe. The preferred use of the right hand only appeared after this. Evidence from archaeological excavations shows that ancient man was already mostly using his right hand to make tools in the early stone age, around half a million years ago; indeed, other nds show that this was even the case for Homo habilis, 1.41.9 million years ago.

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How did asymmetry develop in the use of hands, and why? One of the rival theories, that of Marian Annett, holds that the cause is genetic, that it became asymmetric in the course of an accidental mutation, and then became xed that way. According to this view, the bilateral symmetry of the body, ever since it emerged in phylogenesis, together with handedness, is determined by a gene that appears in two forms (two alleles): an RS+ shifting to the right and an RS shifting to the left. Of these two, it was RS+ which became dominant as the result of a mutation in the early stages of human evolution, and it was this which resulted in right-handedness for the majority of the predecessors of modern man. According to this same theory, the RS formation does not automatically result in left-handedness, merely in a neutral state in which left- or righthandedness can equally arise. This theory can be used with reasonable accuracy to explain the approximately 90: 10 per cent proportion of leftand right-handed people in almost all human populations. It appears that a mechanism developing in such a way, even if the mutation happened previously, must have disappeared before man started moving on two legs, and this is why we do not encounter left- and right-handedness in earlier stages of evolution. In and of itself, however, the dominance of right-handedness does not offer an explanation for the asymmetry of the cerebral hemispheres. All the evidence is that right-handedness can have developed earlier than comprehensible speech in the modern sense. In all probability, communication between human beings was helped with the hand. This may have had consequences for the localization of the communication centre and thus later the speech centre in the left inferior parietal lobe controlling the right hand. The development of the speech centre in the left cerebral hemisphere induced further functional asymmetries, and ultimately it was this that made possible the appearance of speaking, self-aware human beings. A rival theory begins with the premise that the straightening of the human spine was not accompanied by a rearrangement of the valves of the vascular system. It had previously demanded lower pressure to pump blood to a brain that was at about the same height as the heart. Once humans straightened up and became erect, the vessels that became vertical (that had previously been horizontal) did not have the valves necessary to regulate ow. In the vessels leading upwards to the brain, the role of

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small pressure differentials increased. As a result of the asymmetry of the heart and the bifurcations of the aorta (Figure 13.3), the minimal difference in pressure at the outlets of the arteries leading to the two cerebral hemispheres meant that minimally less blood, and thus minimally less oxygen, was passed to the right hemisphere of an erect human than to the left one.

Figure 13.3. The heart and the bifurcations of the aorta (above, in red), in detail and schematically

As mans activities increased, so did his need for oxygen. For this reason as little as a one per cent difference in oxygen supply could multiply in its signicance. This could, so the theory supposes, have caused a division of labour to emerge between the two cerebral hemispheres, according to which the tasks requiring more oxygen are performed by the left hemisphere, and those requiring relatively less by the right. The crossover of nerve bres causes the left hemisphere to control the right of our body, and the right to control the left. This would have been the cause of the localization of both right-handedness and rational thought in the left cerebral hemisphere. The latter theory claims that the asymmetry of the brain must have developed before right-handedness, while according to the former one

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this was the other way around. The latter theory gives an evolutionary explanation, while the former puts the dominance of the right hand down to an accidental mutation (albeit to the development of the preponderance of an asymmetric gene latent in us since the beginning of phylogenesis). Proponents of the former theory refer to measurements which do not bear out a sizeable enough difference between the oxygen supply to the two hemispheres for this to be an adequate explanation. The aim of this book is to provide an exposition rather than to take up a position between rival theories. A division of functions has developed between the two hemispheres of the brain, most probably as the result of the mechanism of one of these theories. For example, the left cerebral hemisphere is commonly referred to as the talking hemisphere, and the right as the silent but seeing hemisphere. In a certain sense the two hemispheres function in different ways. In another sense, certain functions are dominantly directed by one hemisphere or the other. In the majority of humans, the dominance between the two hemispheres only causes small-scale difference (both hemispheres full most functions, just in differing degrees), but it can be a qualitative difference whether the control of a given activity is initiated by one hemisphere or the other. Vital functions can be maintained by one hemisphere on its own, but in the case of healthy persons the two hemispheres communicate with one another. The corpus callosum connects the two hemispheres with nerve bres, through which the communication between the two ows. From the 1930s onwards, the corpus callosum of serious epileptic patients was cut to prevent their attacks from occurring. The communication between the two hemispheres of the brain ceased. This did not trouble the everyday lives of the patients, but in certain situations generated right-left coordination problems, and difculties with counting. From the middle of the 1980s, the identication of functions with particular areas of the brain picked up speed, and to this day our knowledge of the workings of the brain are enriched with huge amounts of new information every year. In parallel with the mapping of the brain, so-called neural models have been successfully used to model a number of brain functions with computers. One of the most interesting results of this was the discovery that the functioning of our left cerebral hemisphere is more akin to that of a digital computer, while our right hemisphere is more like

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the workings of an analogue one. It was with the help of this observation that by the early 1990s Tam s Roska (1940) and Leon O. Chua (1936) a developed the rst working neural model, the articial retina, which, mimicking the asymmetry of the brain, passes visual information to the brain with the help of digital and analogue processors integrated into a single chip. This same theoretical model helped nd a rational explanation for the many observed distinctions in function-pairs between the two cerebral hemispheres. We have reached the last known stage of the series of symmetry breakings that have occurred in the course of the evolution of living matter. The asymmetric functioning of the brain, like Kants antinomies, ascribes antithetical pairs to the two hemispheres. These antithetical pairs have far-reaching effects, whose consequences have not yet all been discovered. They induce deviations, more signicant than the motor functions mentioned above (hand movement, speech), in our thought, processes of cognition and learning, in our relations with each other and the world, and in our world-view. With the knowledge we have today, we can display neither a correlation nor the lack of one between right-handedness and left hemispheric dominance in thinking. It is clearly the functioning of the left cerebral hemisphere that is responsible for rational thought. The right hemisphere is responsible for our emotional thought functions formed by feelings and impressions. In healthy people, both hemispheres are almost equally developed, and work in cooperation with each other; in general, dominance means that the functioning of one very slightly exceeds that of the other. Scientic thought primarily requires rational brain functions. Schoolchildren with dominant left hemispheres will nd it easier to learn natural sciences. Activities that require spatial manipulation more than a detailed understanding of our environment, like artistic disciplines, will be more successfully learned by pupils whose right hemisphere is dominant. Experience shows that women are more susceptible to thought driven by emotions, while men are more driven by rational thinking. It is highly probable, but not proven beyond doubt, that for the majority of women it is the right hemisphere that is dominant, while for the majority of men it is the left. Our knowledge of the history of science suggests that the majority of the women most successful in mathematical discoveries were more mas-

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culine in nature than our customary picture of the average woman would suggest. There is no evidence in the history of art, however, that the majority of eminent artists might have been women. Another challenge to this categorization is the fact that girls learn to talk earlier than boys, and they retain this verbal advantage for a good while, while in childhood boys are better at spatial manipulation, which is associated with the right hemisphere. We have, therefore, to treat categorical classications with caution. As well as the pairs of properties associated with masculine and feminine thought, it is customary to mention the difference between Eastern and Western ways of thinking. The so-called Western way of thinking, and the Western-style science associated with it, is built on cold rationality. It is based on the formulation of propositions and their proof with the precision of mathematics. A good number of philosophical schools of thought and eminent philosophical gures have tried to transfer the methods of the exact sciences to the social sciences, ethics, and the world of human activity and relations (e.g. Spinoza). Some approaches, with only slight exaggeration, only regard as science that which can formulate and prove its propositions in exact form. According to this, impressions, heuristics and intuition can only be given rights in science if we can prove them on the basis of earlier, axiomatically constructed knowledge. In contrast, the so-called Eastern or Far Eastern way of thinking is much more inclined to be visual and provide examples. Impressions and analogies play a much more signicant role in the process of acquiring knowledge. The science of nature and that of society are less clearly separated. The criteria for the exactness of natural science are more relaxed than in Western-style thinking, which forces the logical rules of Euclidean geometry onto all branches of science. For example, the method of proof of wasan, traditional Japanese geometry, does not follow the criteria demanded by Euclidean geometry, and has nevertheless succeeded in recognizing and proving many important theorems. Where categorical antithetical pairs have to be outlined, even in sciences of the spirit (Geisteswissenschaft ), in contrast to the left-right mirror world of the West, in the East it is the antisymmetry of the yin-yang and rotational symmetry blurring clear boundaries that come to the fore. In the East, asymmetry plays a larger role in visual depictions. This displays

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itself in decorative art, in the culture of the environment and in music just as much as in calligraphy and prose styles. Writing with pictures, from the outset, reects a different associational world. A world of beliefs which is less categorical, and less apt to record the knowledge of a particular era in dogmas, can more easily build new knowledge into itself, and more easily remain closer to nature and the knowledge we have gained of it. The people of the East, who grow up in this visual and conceptual world, are less inclined to make categorical black-white, yes-no judgments, not only in their everyday communication, but also in their scientic thought. We have no indubitable proof that the majority of the people from the East would ab ovo have a dominant right hemisphere. Yet those who grow up in this cultural world carry this way of seeing things with them, even if it is not a genetic characteristic, just like the preference for rational thought in the Western cultural world. As we saw in physics, the cooperation of these two ways of thinking with their roots in different cultures has helped to accept violations of symmetry into our scientic world-view. The result is that today we can see the world as a system that unites symmetries, antisymmetries, chiral symmetries and asymmetries. It is no accident that the functioning of the left cerebral hemisphere responsible for rational thought is compared to the workings of a digital chip, and that the right hemisphere directing emotional functions is considered to be analogue in its operation. In the following we survey a few antisymmetrical pairs of functions with regards their correspondence to one hemisphere or the other. The rational left hemisphere derives logical conclusions. This hemisphere is detail-oriented, comprehending the phenomena of the outside world, the stimuli that reach it, as separate objects. It builds on elements. In contrast, the right hemisphere, of itself, thinks intuitively, feeding on impressions. The right hemisphere grasps the phenomena of the outside world as a whole, holistically. This hemisphere detects continuous phenomena. It senses a set as a whole, not as made up of its elements. The left hemisphere directs so-called intellectual activities, while the right guides actions better described as instinctive. The left hemisphere is more characterized by abstract thinking (belonging to schemes), while it is object-centred thinking that is more typical of the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere primarily guides us to new knowledge by means of conclusions; the right

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Figure 13.4. Tables of right and left hemispheric functions

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Figure 13.4. (cont.)

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one does so more via our creative powers, our imagination. A result of the latter is that the left hemisphere attributes meaning according to a single, strictly set logical order of the information perceived; it comprehends the world in its objective reality, cannot really give something meaning brought by an association, and thereby has no sense of humour. The right hemisphere, in contrast, is more impulsive, interprets the world more subjectively, associates more freely, and thereby has a sense of humour. The left hemisphere processes the information interpreted as being made up of elements analytically. It treats the stimuli arriving from the outside world element by element, in a digital fashion. The right hemisphere deals with the world grasped as a whole synthetically, and processes the pieces of information received simultaneously, in an analogue fashion. In the course of mathematical thinking, the left hemisphere is receptive to algebraic solutions, which analyze details, while the right hemisphere prefers geometric solutions, which cover the phenomenon as a whole and present it in a visual fashion. The following example is often used: if a tourist asks on a London street corner how to get to Big Ben, she will be told to go straight on, then take the second left, then take a right after house number 37, and after three streets she will be where she wants to be; if a tourist inquires about the emperors palace on a street corner in Kyoto, the local will draw him a geometrical drawing on a slip of paper, with roughly the right proportions, marking the directions to take. We experience the same difference between the visiting cards our English and Japanese friends give us: the former has a street name and house number, while the latter has a drawing. It follows from the hemispheric differences in perception and processing of data that the right hemisphere, sensing better in space, grasps events in one go, i.e. simultaneously. In contrast, the left hemisphere, which captures details, the moment, interprets particular events in their temporal order, i.e. sequentially. The right hemisphere, therefore, is responsible for our spatial vision, and the left for our sense of time. The left hemisphere grasps a single moment in each instant, then another one in the next instant, and so on: this is how it builds up its own picture of the world. In a given instant, the right hemisphere captures the whole of the perceptible environment, recording this as the picture it has formed of the world, but

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is not receptive to the chronological order of images recorded at different times. This extreme picture is not borne out by our everyday experiences. The reason is that we sense with both our cerebral hemispheres at the same time. The two hemispheres exchange their information through the corpus callosum. It is the synthesized image of the worlds separately sensed by the two hemispheres that appears in our consciousness. There are many consequences of the elemental asymmetrical properties associated with each hemisphere whose conscious application is only now developing or becoming widespread. In the world of our philosophical thought, for example, we can in retrospect reinterpret a number of factors. Left hemispheric dominance and building upon elements is in this case more likely to be the verication of a nominalist ontology, while left hemispheric dominance, which captures things in their entirety, is more likely that of a Platonist ontology. Similar categorization can be introduced between the teachings of the various logical schools. The pairs of Kants antinomies can likewise be linked to the two cerebral hemispheres. Of these four antithetical pairs, the rst two deserve particular mention: the second, which on the one hand sees things as being made up of simple, indivisible parts, and on the other hand as complex and holistically unied, and the rst, which relates to the spatial and temporal niteness or inniteness of the world. The latter is of interest to us in two aspects. It grasps the concepts of the nite world and of innity in their potentiality: innity can be approached by a series of nite things, but not reached. This potential concept of the innite is the left hemispheric approach. From a right-hemispheric perspective there exists the concept of actual innity. The other aspect is that space is associated with the right hemisphere and time with the left. Of the pairs of the third antinomy, freedom corresponds to the thinking of the right hemisphere, while the left hemisphere is characterized more by being directed or controlled. The necessity of the fourth antinomy is associated with the logical rationality of the left hemisphere, and contingency by the spontaneity of the right one. Mans capacity for verbal expression is linked to the left hemisphere. Someone who is particularly good at verbal expression, however, is not necessarily creative in manipulative activities. Spatial manipulation and

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spatial coordination of hand movements are connected to the right hemisphere. To avoid any misunderstandings, this does not mean that manipulative creativity goes together with left-handedness. Spatial coordination is performed by the right hemisphere in the right-handed, too. This is why a talent for drawing only really manifests itself after the age of seven or eight, when the myelination of the bres in the corpus callosum is complete, and communication and the transfer of information between the two hemispheres becomes fully developed. Right hemispheric dominance is more likely to mean a predestination for artistic activity. So it often happens that excellent artists have difculty expressing themselves verbally; they prefer to put what they have to express into a certain form, or to draw it. The differences between the two hemispheres have a role in sensation, in the process of perception, understanding and gaining knowledge, and consequently in the course of learning. The sensation of time is linked to the left hemisphere, the sensation of space to the right. Let us at this point quote Lorentz observation that space and time transformations can be summarized in a single invariance. The two types of functioning of the two hemispheres of the human brain are given meaning precisely by the fact that the two hemispheres communicate with one another, and, working in cooperation, are capable of grasping and perceiving the world in its fullness and its reality. Spatiality and temporality equally belong to the fullness of the world. This is reected in the physical description of the world in the assertion that space and time transform together, according to a unied symmetry principle. This is how the objectivity of the physical world that surrounds us blends with the structure and functioning of our brain as it forms an awareness of it into a system that follows the same, unied, symmetry (Lorentz invariance, the symmetries of space-time) or asymmetry (the difference between space and time and that between the cerebral hemispheres). This is what established harmony between objective reality, the mode of acquiring knowledge of it, and the picture of the world that this knowledge brought to our consciousness. An interesting example of the cooperation of the cerebral hemispheres is the mechanism of reading. In the course of letter reading, the left hemisphere digitally detects the individual letters one after another (sequen-

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tially). It passes the information, the sequence of letters, through the corpus callosum to the right hemisphere, which synthesizes it into an image of a word, which it then sends back to the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere analyzes the word image this is the comprehension phase. Once it has detected a number of consecutive words, it again passes on this sequence to the right hemisphere, which synthesizes them into a sentence before passing it back to the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere analyzes and interprets the sentence. Once it has detected a number of sentences, it furthers them to the right hemisphere, which synthesizes them into a narrative. This again is returned to the left hemisphere, which analyzes and interprets it. The entire mechanism is an iterated process of to and fro between the two hemispheres. This sort of reading presupposes left hemispheric dominance: this dominance takes the form of the left hemisphere initiating the process. Not all children nd it easy to learn to read with this method. With the so-called global reading method, we rst recognize word images. The word image as a whole is sensed by the right hemisphere and furthered to the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere analyzes it, breaking it down into its elements, its letters, while at the same interpreting the word image. Once it has interpreted and analyzed a number of words, it returns the sequence of them to the right hemisphere, which synthesizes them into a sentence. From this point onwards the iterative process continues in the same way, with the participation of both hemispheres. In this process the analysis of letters one by one has little signicance. Text comprehension can equally succeed without registering the individual letters: breaking down words into letters can come at a later stage of learning to read. Writing, however, which is inevitably sequential, demands it. Alongside the capacity to read gained with the global method, the capacity to write can be learned later, as the analytical stage takes hold. Right-hemispheric dominance is here seen in the way in which the rst initiative begins from the right hemisphere, which plays the leading role. There are children, however, for whom this method is the harder way of learning to read. The conclusion from a comparison of the two reading methods is that there is no single best method in the teaching of reading. For the lions share of children, the functioning of the two hemispheres is essentially bal-

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anced, and they can learn to read with either method. For those children, however, for whom one hemisphere or the other is dominant, learning to read is only easy with the method that is suitable for them. We sense musical sounds in a similar way to letters. The individual musical notes reach our ears sequentially. In those with left hemispheric dominance, individual musical notes are passed from the left hemisphere to the right one, which synthesizes them and turns them into a melody, then passes this back to the left hemisphere, which, after analyzing a few musical units one after the other, sends this back to the right hemisphere for synthesis, which is then sent back again, until the entire work is put together. The whole process is like that of verbal comprehension. Those with right hemispheric dominance nd it hard to distinguish the various notes in a song. They sense the melody rst, which is what their right hemisphere passes on to the left for analysis, and so on. Those with left dominance easily solmizate a melody as soon as they hear it, but have more difculty singing it right away; those with right dominance can immediately hum what they have heard, but nd it hard instantly to break it down into its constituent parts and solmizate it or play it on a piano. Sat at a concert, the former group can almost see the score note by note, while the latter group appreciate the music for its overall impression. Something similar happens with the learning of mathematics. The left cerebral hemisphere is the algebraic, the arithmetic one, that builds upon individual numbers. It grasps sets in terms of their individual members: numbers one by one, one after another, in turn. The right hemisphere is the global, the geometric one, for which the set appears as a single unit, and numbers are registered as sets. In practice, this begins in early childhood, with the beginning of the development of the notion of numbers. If we place four counters in front of a child with left hemispheric dominance, it will count them by showing each around in turn: this is the rst counter, this the second, this is the third, this is the fourth. Then we can asked the child how many counters it saw, and the child will reply. A child with right dominance senses the set of counters as a whole, detecting that there are four without counting them separately. If in kindergarten they play a game in which the toy dolls go in a line to have breakfast, then if there are already ve in the line, what the left-hemispheric child registers is that the fth doll was the last to join it. The right-hemispheric child does not

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detect that the doll joined the line as the fth, simply that there happen to be ve dolls in total. The latter does not concentrate on the last doll to join the line, but the line as a whole, while the former is only capable of deciding how many dolls there are in total through information about one particular doll or another. Put in precise terms, we can say that the left hemisphere thinks in ordinal numbers, the right one in cardinal numbers. The two types of number concept come into harmony with one another in the consciousness in the course of the change of developmental level around the age of six, one of the so-called changes in Piaget-levels. We originally have two types of number concept, however, on which two different types of arithmetic can be built: an ordinal arithmetic, and a cardinal arithmetic. In ordinal mathematics, the innite is a potential concept. In cardinal mathematics, which thinks in terms of sets (of points and of numbers), the concept of the innite can be actual. Both types of arithmetic are capable of interpreting all mathematical operations and relations. The difference is only in the way they are approached. Hilberts formalism, for example, which is built upon discrete, individual objects, is based on ordinal mathematics. An example of cardinal mathematics is the logicism of Frege (18481925), which is built on sets. (Russells type theory represents a dualist approach in-between these.) The two types of formulation of the theory of quantum mechanics, which developed in parallel, present an example of how the same physical theory can equally be described with either of the two mathematical approaches. The matrix mechanics of Heisenberg (1901 1976) works with matrices made up of discrete elements (a left-hemispheric, ordinal theory). The wave mechanics of Schr dinger and de Broglie (1892 o 1987) reaches the same results by searching for the discrete eigenvalues of continuous functions (a right-hemispheric, cardinal theory). Mathematics textbooks in current use are based on the cardinal concept of numbers. Arithmetic textbooks that build on ordinal numbers only appear rarely and in experimental form. Nevertheless we can say that in education it is primarily left-hemispheric rationality and logic that is prevalent. Schools primarily teach children laws of nature and the learning of proven facts, and try to point to the logical method of their proof. It is no accident that one of the rst right-hemispheric teaching experiments was initiated by the Israeli sculptor Yaacov Agam (1928). As an artist of

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international renown, he understood that school had for him been a series of failures because the teaching method which had been forced upon him had been designed for children with left hemispheric dominance. In Hungary the teaching experiment of Jozsef Zsolnai (1935-) in T r kb lint set oo a itself the goal of establishing a school where in teaching as a whole, and in the distribution of the daily timetable, the childrens left and right cerebral hemispheres are burdened alternately and in roughly equal measure. To achieve this, the classes primarily teaching logical knowledge are followed in turn by activities serving aesthetic and emotional development and those demanding physical effort and manipulative creativity. This is how asymmetries became consciously implemented in everyday teaching practice. We gained our information about asymmetries of the brain initially from the post-mortem data of those affected by strokes, then later from psychological tests and experiments. Our knowledge of brain asymmetries was greatly helped by the observation of schizophrenic patients, and by Piagets observations from experiments on children. Both directions of experiment displayed a strong correlation with the attitude of experimental subjects to symmetry. In early childhood, the attitude to symmetry plays a role in determining the so-called Piaget levels of development. The observation of patients helped, for example, in the elaboration of the so-called Rorschach test. In the course of this the psychologist analyses the associations evoked by the gureless and slightly dissymmetrical shape, depending in part on whether the participant in the experiment puts greater emphasis on the symmetry of the gure or on the violation of this symmetry. It is not only in this context that psychology makes use of symmetry. In contrast to mirror symmetry, which is based on opposites, it is well known in the psychology of advertising that the audience targeted by an advertisement is most susceptible to rotational symmetric emblems and logos. Their repetition, together with the permanence of the way in which they are rotated back to their original position, suggest stability, dependability and a sense of security, and strengthen the trust placed in the advertiser. It is as a combination of these qualities that the yin-yang, blending timelessness and the harmony of opposites (and which today also serves as Koreas

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national symbol), can have become the symbol of various philosophical explanations and interpretations over thousands of years. With certain illnesses, the presence or lack of a sense of humour can help determine the preservation or decline of the healthy balance between the two cerebral hemispheres. The observation of epileptic patients with a severed corpus callosum helped recognize the coordination or counting disorders that can appear: how the left hemisphere becomes dominant in a situation where, in the absence of communication, a spontaneous decision occurs between the execution of instructions separately directed by the two hemispheres, and which functions are unaffected by the absence of the connecting role of the corpus callosum. Nowadays there are a number of non-invasive methods of examination at our disposal which allow us precisely to determine which areas, or even which groups of cells, are active in the brain during particular operations. Some functions of the two hemispheres are clearly antithetically opposed (antisymmetrical), such as digital or analogue operation, or the location of the motor centre or the speech centre. The distribution of the majority of functions, however, is to be understood in terms of the dominance of one hemisphere or the other: both perform the function, but one plays a slightly more emphatic role than the other (dissymmetry). It is important to stress this, lest someone might think of belittling the emotional life of a scientist on the basis of left hemispheric dominance, or the capacity of an artist for rational reasoning, citing dominance of the right hemisphere. Indeed, artists do not all display right hemispheric dominance. The members of the Brueghel family, for example, painted meticulous pictures that were worked to the tiniest detail, which suggests left hemispheric dominance. The majority of impressionist and cubist painters did not attribute signicance to minute detail: they were more guided by the overall impression and by emphasizing the more important characteristics of the theme being depicted, which suggests a right-dominant approach. Figure 13.5 shows two paintings. The same theme is depicted by two artists with two different attitudes and two different approaches. The upper painting, The Maids of Honour (Las Meninas) by Velazquez (15991660), is a minutelyelaborated work striving to paint details accurately. Picasso (18811973) made a copy of this same painting, as he saw it. We see this picture in the

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Figure 13.5. The Maids of Honour (Las Meninas), as seen by Velazquez and Picasso

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Cerebral asymmetries

lower part of the gure. Picasso was not interested in small details: what remained for him was an overall impression of the painting, in which only the pictures general proportions, centres of gravity and main protagonists were signicant, could be symbolized even by triangles or rectangles, and the rest was not important. The two paintings hold up a mirror to the relative asymmetric hemispheric dominance of the two painters.