Two Minds, One Brain

The two sides of the human brain specializes in different kinds of thinking, reports Executive Fitness Newsletter. The left hemisphere of the brain handles analytic functions, such as language and mathematics, while the right side is involved with spatial relationships and music patterns.

In 1982, medical research found out that the brain directed consciousness to the side of the brain that best performed a task. For example, while you are writing a letter, the left side of your brain is doing the thinking. Music can be heard in the background and every time you are conscious of the melody, it seems that consciousness shifted from the left hemisphere of the brain and your writing to the right side of the brain and the music. In other words, it was believed that consciousness is singular and it is not possible to actually be engaged in two thinking processes at the same time.

Duality Of Consciousness. Evidence on the subject was presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco. David Galin, M.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of California, San Francisco said that the the two sides of the brain had been surgically separated for treatment of certain cases of epilepsy. After the operation, each side proved to be conscious and able to carry out its own complex processes, independently of the other hemisphere.

The two hemispheres should function smoothly by complementing each other. But this does not always happen. The two modes of mental operation are often in conflict. The left side would interpret all information with factual, cool logic, while the right side would rely on intuition and imagination.

If we are to obtain our complete mental potential, Galin argues that we must first fully develop each special mode; then we must be able to turn off either mode, depending on the task to be accomplished; lastly, the ability to operate both minds simultaneously is needed for creative synthesis.

Personality Types Differ In Pain Tolerance. Untrained extroverts have higher pain tolerance than introverts, and physical training increases their pain threshold as well as their tolerance to pain. But in the case of introverts, physical conditioning only increases their tolerance to pain, the threshold remains the same.

Dr. M. Ian Phillips, former Professor of Physiology, Pharmacology and Biophysics at the University of Iowa (presently, a Norris Professor of Applied Life Sciences and Director of the Center for Rare Disease Therapies) carried out tests in the late 70s with subjects classified by the Maudsley Personality Inventory.

Dr. Phillips said athletes graded as highly extroverted had slightly higher pain thresholds and more pain tolerance than non-athletes. High introverted athletes had pain thresholds similar to that of unconditioned subjects, but their living of pain tolerance was equal to the extroverted athletes.