Two Brain Theory

Post Reply New Topic

After my stroke, my wife decided it was a good time to radically upgrade the house. But our house is not like other houses. It is somewhat unique and such a move should be executed with some foresight. So yesterday a number of construction workers showed up and began tearing up the house. The goal was to change out 7 of our outside doors. There was a little warm spell from the past few months of winter cold. So the timing was good. They tore apart 2 of the doors and decided THERE WAS A PROBLEM which would bring the whole effort to a grinding halt. Well somehow even though I am still very much on the mends, they reversed course and it is all steam ahead.

I have been reading through Jill Bolte Taylor second book called Whole Brain Living. But so far nothing to report.

Here is something a little interesting.

Fear is a strong emotion that is most often triggered in the present moment (right brain), in response to a known, definite, and immediate threat. For example, if I am walking through the woods and almost step on a snake that is slithering across the path, because I am terrified of snakes, my fear response will be instantly triggered. When this happens, I feel an intense flush of freak-out, I squeal like a pig, my heart races a million miles an hour, and I jump backward because blood has instantly rushed into my flailing arms and legs. My eyes dilate as I frantically look about to see where that petrifying thing just went. And, oh yes, to my complete embarrassment, I had forgotten that I was chatting on the phone with my pal, who probably heard the whole event and is now either laughing or terrified for me. All depending on which character in her brain is more dominant.

This is an interesting situation. Is that what YOU would do ???????????

Something like this actually happened to me many years ago. I was taking a college class in Field Archaeology at UCLA. I spent my Saturdays at a dig site out in the woods in Southern California. On this particular day, I was walking through the woods and I heard a sound. A large 6 foot long rattlesnake had struck me and missed. This was a very poisonous rattle snake and it missed. My mind went off at a hundred miles an hour and I remained perfectly still as I assessed the situation.

What to do? What to do?

I could try and run away, but this rattle snake was right next to me and coiled up, ready to strike.

I was wearing shorts. Why was I wearing shorts? No protection at all. I was a sitting duck. This raced through my mind. I remained perfectly still while I tried to analyze the situation and pick the best move.

Why of all days did I pick this one to not wear long pants (not that long bluejeans would protect me).

I raced through all the possible moves on my part, but I was coming up empty. Then it happened. Something I didn't even think about or consider.

The poisonous rattle snake went far away back into the woods. That was really strange. What happened. The rattlesnake attacked me because it had seen me moving down the field. It missed me because I could see a large lump on its side (probably had eaten some small animal recently). Because I had not moved, I became invisible to the poisonous snake. It realized something was wrong. I might be a threat. Need to leave. SO THE SNAKE LEFT. And I lived another day.

Brain Anatomy

The Human Brain
Two Halves to a Coin

Still reading the book Whole Brain Living, but so far nothing new to report.

I did come across a strange article about Brain Bridging.

Bridging directly connects billions of neurons in one brain with those in a second, mimicking the brain’s natural bridge between its two halves. Remarkably, two people, once Bridged, seem to be able to share all of their sensations, daydreams, memories and thoughts.

It turns out this was FAKE NEWS.

I am slowly making my way through the book by Jill Bolte Taylor called WHOLE BRAIN LIVING.

The book documents her professional insight having survived a major stroke at the age of around 35.

I consider the insight to be very important for some Aspies (probably not all) because it provides interesting details on HOW WE BECAME US. It is almost like reading THE BOOK OF LIFE.

Jill describes the human brain as four pieces. These are the left side of the brain (which is the dominant) and the right side of the brain. Each side has two parts. These are called THE THINKING and the EMOTIONAL parts. Each of these parts represent different regions of our brain. These pieces of the brain grow and function until they reach a stage of maturity when they combine. This generally occurs around the age of 10 to 12 years of age. And then they become fixed. In general, most people develop to that point and spend the rest of their lives as normal human beings, NT human beings.

But what this book brings to the table, is what about other human beings, neurodiverse humans.

So from my perspective, this book is a roadmap of WHAT AM I?

So from my perspective, I was born a normal human child. But then around the age of 3 or 4, I died. No not all of me, but around one half of my brain was severely damaged when a large bull attacked me. The blow caused great damage to one side of my brain (my left side) and my right side stepped it and took over carrying me on for the rest of my life. Eventually over time, my left side came back and took over the duties normally performed by the right side of the brain.

You might say I underwent a BRAIN FLIP.

This was not a bad way to live, until I reached the age where the left and right sided finally completely combine together (age 10-12), then I learned the meaning of TORTURE. As an end result, I am an Aspie. I have strengths and weakness just like everyone else. The only difference is that mine are simple off the charts.

Back to the discussion of the book by Jill Bolte Taylor called WHOLE BRAIN LIVING.

I have a strong association with Character 3 & 4 in Jill's book but not Character 1 & 2. Character 3 & 4 originate in the right side of the brain. In general they are secondary support brains. They are unable to function and control the brain. They sit in the sidelines. But in my case, due to a very severe accident as a young child, my left side of my brain was knocked off line and my secondary brain stepped in and took control. Therefore, I am structured differently.

Jill's book provides a description of these Characters. She gives her Character 3 the name PIGPEN from the comic strip Peanuts. She describes this character in the following way:

Our Character 3 supports a personality that is exuberant, joyful, and completely devoted to the sensations and experience of this moment, without fear or judgment. It does not know about the past and has no perception of the future. As such, it does not perceive risk as a negative thing but merely as a great adventure and a yummy adrenaline rush.

My character 3 is a joy to behold and watch in action. It is almost like someone named SUPERMAN.

I have finished reading the chapter in the book by Jill Bolte Taylor called WHOLE BRAIN LIVING that describes CHARACTER 4. Of all the parts of the human brain, this is the part that most describes me. It is my essence.

So let us see what she writes:

Welcome to our Character 4, I say our because this is the part of our consciousness, our right thinking brain that we share with one another, and all other life. I see the brain cells underlying our Character 4 as the portal through which the energy of the universe enters into and fuels every cell of our body. This energy and its consciousness fill up our entire being. We are swimming in it, and it is swimming in us. There is no separation. Our Character 4 is the all-knowing intelligence from which we came, and it is how we incarnate the consciousness of the universe.

These are awfully nice words to describe my character, but in the real world, I feel like the world hates us (Character 4s) and would rather see us dead. Almost to the point of hoping that we never came into existence in the first place.

But having said this, I am still a happy individual. And I love life and somehow I feel that life still loves me. Just the way I am in the here and now.

My internet has been down for a few days. Slowly working my way through WHOLE BRAIN LIVING by Jill Bolte Taylor. Some of what she says in my opinion is SPOT ON. But then some of what she says is SPOT OFF in my humble opinion.

I have been gone for a week. I purchased a book by Tony Robbins called Life Force. The book is about all types of illnesses INCLUDING STROKES and various new treatments on the horizon. I found it interesting.

The stroke that I suffered could have been fixed if modern surgical methods could have been implemented within 2 hours of the stroke. But generally it is almost impossible to do so within such a short time window. My nearest hospital was over an hours drive away from my home. And since my stroke occurred in the middle of the night, it was not even know when it occurred. But this book address a new type of treatment that may (emphasize MAY) allow one to correct the problem if it is implemented within 48 hours from the time of the stoke. If this is true and the next few years will tell, then I would not have experienced the loss of losing around 2 percent of my brain cells (which translated to losing a good chunk of my memory.

One of the most important rules in TWO BRAIN THEORY.

During my life, I have found that there was a very important rule to follow in life. This rule was that whenever there was an important decision to make within my life, it was important for me to SLEEP ON IT.

The reason why this rule is important is because my second brain comes online in full force during REM SLEEP. It will analyze the possible decisions and look at it from a thousand different angles and come up with the best solution and pass it onto me when I wake up in the morning.

My computer network has been down for a few days and I finally got the problem corrected. I live so far off the mainstream that the way I communicate on the internet is through a satellite in space. (THIS IS REAL)

O.K. to get back to the discussion. I have continued reading the book by Jill Bolte Taylor called WHOLE BRAIN LIVING.

I read Chapter 12 which is titled The Last 100 Years - Our Four Characters And The Influence of Technology.

In my humble opinion this is a truly phenomenal chapter. Jill brakes down the last 100 years in the U.S. into how the human brain has evolved from evolution of our four independent brains. You will never read this in any history book. It is truly out of this world and I think she may be right on target with her analysis.

She basically describes historical evolution through

G.I. Generation (fought in World War II)
Silent Generation (born between 1928 and 1939
Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964
Generation X (born between 1965 and 1976)
Millennials (born between 1977 and 1996)
Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2010)
Alpha Generation (born from 2010 to present)

Wow! a history book about the evolution of the human brain over the past century. This is a truly amazing work.

Well I finished reading the book. This was a really interesting book about two brain theory.

Now I have been sidestepped over the past few days. It turns out that when I suffered a stroke that it was more extensive then I originally thought. It was a life ender stroke. Most people who experience a stroke of my magnitude never recover. They experience something called Aphasia. That was an interesting word that I never heard of before. I learned about it two months ago. So now I am learning everything I can about the condition. There are around 2 million people in the U.S. with Aphasia. Most people who develop Aphasia tend to die quickly. It is related to the leading cause of death in the U.S. I do not think that it causes death, but rather the damage caused by Aphasia is so great that people lose their ability to function properly and as a result generally lose their will to survive. They just give up their will to live.

Aphasia is a condition that affects your ability to communicate. It can affect your speech, as well as the way you write and understand both spoken and written language.

Having experienced the condition, I would say that the damage is even more intensive than that. It also affects your knowledge of words. It is very hard to communicate when all you are left with is only 1 percent of your words. The reason why those words survived is because they were buried away in the most unused deepest areas of the brain. In other words the words you hardly ever really used. All my simple words dissolved away. It left me almost speechless.

Some time has passed. The book is really interesting. I understand 2 brain theory. The left side of my brain and the right side of my brain are different individuals. One is a sleep brain and one is a daytime brain. In my case because I was attacked and killed by a large bull when I was around 3 or 4 years old, I experienced a near death experience. The dominant left side, the daytime size of my brain, was killed. My night time brain which exist in REM and NREM sleep states came on line an hour or so later and I experienced what is defined as a Near Death Experience.

So I lived the rest of my life as a right dominant brain. That is why I am different and many of the people on Wrong Planet feel the same way. It is like we exist in a strange universe, in a Wrong Planet.

But I can also see that Jill in her book also provides further understanding. We have multiple characters within us. So if you die before the age of 12 or 13 when a child transitions into an adult, you will experience many of the brain types as described by Jill but there is a difference.

There are many individuals that have been described as geniuses. They have remarkably high I.Q.s I have come to believe these individuals also experienced a near death experience as a child. As a result they have a few extra brain cells. That makes them unique. They are gifted with extremely high I.Q.s But also they have a strange set of extra cells. Many of these cells in their brain provide them with a set of strange anomalies. These cells are normally removed from the brain when they transition into adulthood. The body automatically deletes them. But in our case, these extra cells are still there. They remain. It can make difficult. It takes us longer to learn. But when we finally break through, we never stop learning.

Humans are such a strange being. I wonder which planet we came from?

In a strange way I think about myself in terms of a Timex Watch.

Timex Watch

This is from 1988. Before this period in time, watches were wound up each day. If you forgot to wind it, the watch stopped ticking and the accuracy of the time was lost. It had to be reset.

In a sense, humans are unique beings. If our dominant left side of our brain becomes damaged, our other side of our brain, our night time brain, comes online and we, just like a Timex Watch, we just go on ticking, and ticking, and ticking.