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Autistic savants

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Odin
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25 Feb 2008, 8:52 am

Orwell wrote:
The whole left-brain/right-brain thing is largely a pop science myth (much like the idea that we only use 10% of our brains). It's not really possible to locate something like "math," or "music," or "language" in one specific area of the brain.


Both true and false to a degree. It's true that there is a lot of BS out there about brain lateralization (that often is basically bashing thinly veiled bashing of left-brained people), but that doesn't mean there isn't lateralization. Most of the language areas are on the left side of the brain in the region surrounding the Sylvian fissure separating the frontal and temporal lobes. The equivalent area on the right side of the brain has a few centers important for understanding the non-verbal aspects of speech such as intonation as well as areas for understanding pitch, rhythm, timbre, and other aspects of music


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Orwell
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25 Feb 2008, 7:50 pm

Odin wrote:
Orwell wrote:
The whole left-brain/right-brain thing is largely a pop science myth (much like the idea that we only use 10% of our brains). It's not really possible to locate something like "math," or "music," or "language" in one specific area of the brain.


Both true and false to a degree. It's true that there is a lot of BS out there about brain lateralization (that often is basically bashing thinly veiled bashing of left-brained people), but that doesn't mean there isn't lateralization. Most of the language areas are on the left side of the brain in the region surrounding the Sylvian fissure separating the frontal and temporal lobes. The equivalent area on the right side of the brain has a few centers important for understanding the non-verbal aspects of speech such as intonation as well as areas for understanding pitch, rhythm, timbre, and other aspects of music

Yes, but the brain is amazingly plastic. There are several cases of people who have had an entire half of their brain removed and were still able to function as they had before. It is a bad oversimplification to say that music or creativity is on the right side, while math or logic is on the left side.


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Odin
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25 Feb 2008, 9:54 pm

Orwell wrote:
Odin wrote:
Orwell wrote:
The whole left-brain/right-brain thing is largely a pop science myth (much like the idea that we only use 10% of our brains). It's not really possible to locate something like "math," or "music," or "language" in one specific area of the brain.


Both true and false to a degree. It's true that there is a lot of BS out there about brain lateralization (that often is basically bashing thinly veiled bashing of left-brained people), but that doesn't mean there isn't lateralization. Most of the language areas are on the left side of the brain in the region surrounding the Sylvian fissure separating the frontal and temporal lobes. The equivalent area on the right side of the brain has a few centers important for understanding the non-verbal aspects of speech such as intonation as well as areas for understanding pitch, rhythm, timbre, and other aspects of music

Yes, but the brain is amazingly plastic. There are several cases of people who have had an entire half of their brain removed and were still able to function as they had before. It is a bad oversimplification to say that music or creativity is on the right side, while math or logic is on the left side.


Brain plasticity decreases drastically during adolescence, that is why hemisherectomies (removal of a cerebral hemisphere) are only done to kids. In the vast majority of people the various localizations are in the same place (though left-handed people have a far greater chance of having everything reversed, so language areas would be on the right side and music areas on the left, or shared more evenly between the hemispheres then right-handed people.


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