Right Brain Lefty

on the difference between left-brain and right-brain

The two hemispheres are completely separate.  Because they process information differently, each of our hemispheres think about different things, they care about different things, and, dare I say, they have very different personalities.

…

Our right hemisphere is all about this present moment. It’s all about “right here, right now.” Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it leans kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information, in the form of energy, streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems and then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like, what this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like.

…

My left hemisphere - our left hemisphere — is a very different place. Our left hemisphere thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past and it’s all about the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment and start picking out details, details and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information, associates it with everything in the past we’ve ever learned, and projects into the future all of our possibilities.  And our left hemisphere thinks in language. It’s that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html