Right EMISPHERE and Left EMISPHERE
MUSIC and LANGUAGE
by Giorgia Ragni
Scientifically and pre-Historically.....
As we all know, our brain is made of two emispheres: the left emisphere, realm of what is rational, practical, logical, analytical and mathematical; and the right emisphere, realm of what is emotional, creative, instinctive and intuitive.
What makes a Human being peculiar is the awareness of lateralization (awareness of having a left and a right side in the body), and of using a Hemisoma (half part of the body ), particulaly the right side.
As a matter of fact, 90% of the population is right-handed and scientists were able to note this kind of evolution by the way stone tools were built milions of years ago.
Several researches demostrated that lateralization and the use of the right hand are tightly related.
In the making of prehistoric utensils, men were mainly using the left emisphere (responsible for the rational and manual activity). At the same time they were particularly using the right hand, since the left emisphere controls the right side and viceversa. Actually, scholars could not establish which one of the two hands was the most used by examining the arm's bones in the fossils' records, but by studying the teeth.
In fact, labial striations on the anterior teeth have been documented in numerous European pre-Neandertal and Neandertal fossils and serve as evidence for handedness.
Furthermore, they discovered that the examined fossil showed a concentration of oblique striations on, especially, the left I1 and right I1, I2 and C1, which signal that it was right-handed.
From these patterns we contend that the fossil was habitually using the right hand, over the left, in manipulating objects during some kind of oral processing.
But we are not all right handed as the article would suggest, to the contrary the left handedness trait evolved because of its remarkable ability (especially in fighting related activities).
Left-handed people in fact, show a special talent for episodic memory, for mathematics, as well as in boxing, and in interactive sports which require reactivity.
Finally, Left-handed people remembers episodes and events better than the right handed ones because there is a stronger connection between their hemispheres.
Linguistically....
Linguistics itself shows that the right hand/side of the body is privileged. As a matter of fact, we call the right hand: "RIGHT" (as opposed to wrong). So semantically, the term itself carries a specific subjective meaning: which is: correct, Just, fair, proper etc.).
This is not only a prerogative of the English language, but it is true in others as well such as Italian, French, Chinese, Korean German and so forth.
On the other side, the term "LEFT" semantically suggests that something is missing, or lacking, or, as the vocabulary states, its synonyms are:
lost, abandoned, misplaced, omitted, removed. As we can see, LEFT carries a negative meaning. In Italian "LEFT" is "SINISTRA / O" and it also means: accident, strange, ambiguous etc.
Now, it really does sound strange that the term indicating the side of the brain responsible for the rational, analytical and logical behaviours is associated with a word which inspires something ambiguous, malevolent, mischievous and threatening or terrifying as a severe car accident.
My Hypothesys lays in the idea that it is "right", hence correct and fair the side which most of the people use. What they probably did not know when the term was first coined, is that the right hand is actually controlled by the left part of the brain and viceversa.
Interestingly enough, Asian languages such as Chinese and Korean also present peculiar curiosities when it comes to right and left : in fact the Chinese character 左 (zuǒ) means ''left'', but other synonyms of the character are: wrong, odd, differing, opposite. The character also means East while the character for ''right'' 右 (yòu) means West ; similarly, in Korean the Hangeul for ''left'' is 왼 (oin) and its derived word 외다 (oeda) means to be wrongly oriented, false, obsolete, wrong. Right is 오른 (oreun) and its related variant 옳다 (olhda) means to be right, correct, true; again another related word 오르다 (oreuda): means to rise ........hence East.
So to recap......also in Chinese and Korean languages ''right'' is the correct way and left the wrong but while in Chinese ''left'' is associated with East, on the opposite side in Korean the Hangeul for ''left'' means West.
Artistically....
As American cognitive Psychologist Jerome Bruner writes in his "On Knowing. Essays for the Left Hand":
Left and right hand represent two cultures, the Humanistic and the scientific one.
About the left hand we say that it is clumsy, although visual art students can express themselves better by drawing with the left hand.
The right hand represents the hand that practically does, while the left hand as the one who dreams. The right hand represents the order and legality, righteousness. Knowledge achieved with the right hand becomes science while the left hand becomes emotion, intuition and illegitimacy. On the other side, it is also proved that the greatest scientific hypothesys are accomplished by the left hand.
Let's imagine the piano keyboard, for example: the lowest keys are placed in the left side, so the left hand is mainly responsible for playing harmony and tempo while the right hand is in charge of the melody. Both parts are fundamental for the composition to sound complete as well as both left and right style of thinking are necessary for a succesfull teaching method.
Practically....ERGO SUM!
We, the Ergo Sum team, actually believe that both left and right side of the brain need to be efficiently working together at all times, anything we do, any activity we encompass.
The Ergo Sum practice aims to have both parts co-working simoultaneously, whether we deal with an activity that is more left brain centered (such as talking, for example) or a more right brain centered activity (such as playing the piano, for example).
Science teach us that the verbal language is located in the left side of the brain whereas the non-verbal language resides in the right part, nontheless when we are talking (whether consciously or not), we use the rational left side of the brain to organize syntax, semantics, choose the appropriate lexicon, in one word to structure the content of our speech, but we also use the emotional right side of the brain to convey the content of the message in a way that is most efficient and expressive by using the correct intonation, inflection and send the desired emotion.
So the practice's goal is to make people aware of the importance of this synchronous use of the two emispheres and through the multiple count make them more and more familiar with an activity which stimulates the hemispheres to cooperate and collaborate together.
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