Left Brain vs Right Brain
July 01,2009 
By Ben Cohen
A fascinating article from the Scientific American on the evolutionary origins of the two sides of our brains. The key points of the (very) lengthy piece:
The authors have proposed that the specialization of the
brain’s two hemispheres was already in place when vertebrates arose 500
million years ago.
The left hemisphere originally seems to
have focused in general on controlling well-established patterns of
behavior; the right specialized in detecting and responding to
unexpected stimuli.
Both speech and right-handedness may have evolved from a specialization for the control of routine behavior.
Face recognition and the processing of spatial relations may trace their heritage to a need to sense predators quickly.
Photo by Gaetan Lee
By Ben Cohen
A fascinating article from the Scientific American on the evolutionary origins of the two sides of our brains. The key points of the (very) lengthy piece:
The authors have proposed that the specialization of the
brain’s two hemispheres was already in place when vertebrates arose 500
million years ago.The left hemisphere originally seems to
have focused in general on controlling well-established patterns of
behavior; the right specialized in detecting and responding to
unexpected stimuli.Both speech and right-handedness may have evolved from a specialization for the control of routine behavior.
Face recognition and the processing of spatial relations may trace their heritage to a need to sense predators quickly.
Photo by Gaetan Lee