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The role of environment in learning
The role of environment in learning
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After years of research the human brain has been dissected and analyzed on how it functions when faced with different aspects of life. The brain itself is two hemispheres that work together in harmony to understand the world that surrounds it and learns new things to survive and thrive. The two sides of the brain learn in different ways and give us a better understanding by sharing the information they gather with each other. Even though each side learns differently from the other, if one hemisphere gets damaged the remaining side will do its best to comprehend how the dead side would normally learn.
The brain as a whole is a very powerful organ. Both hemispheres work together to get every bit of information out of what it is being taught by the environment as well as controlling the motor activity of the body. They do this by being bound together by a bridge, built out of fibers. This fiber bridge allows the two to be able to talk one another almost instantly through the corpus callosum (Webb, 1983). This means that as soon as information arrives to one half of the brain the other hemisphere has access to it as well in the matter of a fraction of a second. This sharing of information is so fast that the responses of both sides appear harmonized that the surrounding world is regarded as flawless and allows for one avenue of consciousness (Carter, 1998). However, even though both sides of the brain work extremely well together both sides have their strengths and weaknesses.
In majority of individuals, the left half of the brain takes charge of the academic activities. These academic activities break down into logic, words, numbers and reasoning (Gallagher, 1995). These abilities of the left brain are what make humans ...
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As a whole, the brain is an elaborate system that learns from the surrounding and from itself. It has a system of checks and balances that makes both halves equally as important as the other. Without the right, man would not have spotted dangerous creatures hidden amongst the foliage, but without the left hemisphere man would not be intellectually inclined.
Works Cited
Carter, R. (1998). Mapping the Mind. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Gallagher, S. H. (1995-2013). Left-Brained Versus Right-Brained: Which is Better for Learning. Electronic Educational Environment. Retrieved November 25, 2013, from http://eee.uci.edu/news/articles/0505brain.php
Springer, S. P. (1981). Left Brain, Right Brain. New York, NY: W. H. Freeman and Company
Webb, G. (1983). Left/Right Brains Teammates in Learning. Exceptional Children, 49(6), 508-515.
The author explains that in many businesses, abilities associated with the left side of the brain used to matter the most. These include lin...
"Your Right-Brained Visual Learner." Time 4 Learning. Time 4 Learning, Web. 6 Oct 2009. .
The textbook mentioned how it is possible to live with one side of the brain (Lilienfeld et al., 2016). However, I was still a bit confused on this concept because I have always thought that you need both hemispheres working together to function properly. As I watched the TedTalk, I was further able to change my understanding of the concept that you can live with one hemisphere, you would just lose some functions associated with that hemisphere, as Jill explained (Taylor, 2008). Not only that, but from the textbook I never understood how you would feel without one of your hemispheres not functioning properly, I personally thought that you would lose some abilities and it would be difficult to survive. However, the TedTalk changed this understanding of mine because, like Jill, although she lost some functions, she lost all her stresses, and she felt peace, as she states, “So here I am in this space, and my job, and any stress related to my job - it was gone. And I felt lighter in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external world and any stressors related to any of those - they were gone. And I felt this sense of peacefulness” (Taylor, 2008). It gave her a whole new world and it never occurred to me that this could happen, so it really expanded on the knowledge obtained from the
Nowadays, it is widely known that the right and left hemisphere have different functions. The two hemispheres are equally important in a daily life basis. Nevertheless, in the 1960’s this was not common knowledge. Even though today the importance of the brain hemispheres is common knowledge, people don’t usually know to whom attribute this findings. One of the people who contributed to form a more defined picture about the brain hemispheres and their respective functions was Roger Wolcott Sperry, with the split brain research. Roger Sperry did more contributions than the split brain research, but this is his most important and revolutionary research in the psychological field. Thanks to the split brain research, Sperry proved that the two hemispheres of the brain are important, they work together and whatever side of the brain is more capable of doing the task is the hemisphere that takes the lead.
The left-brain / right-brain theory believes that different people are either more dominant using the left hemisphere or the right hemisphere of the brain. According to this theory, analytical, detailed, and logical are all considered common traits of a left-brained learner. Deliberate, original, and creative, are all how right-brained learners may be described (Rodgers).
These two hemispheres have been thought to work independently if separated from one another. The idea that these two hemispheres of the brain can co-exist independently functioning as separate conscious minds is an interesting one. An idea that was explored in 1981 by Roger Sperry. He pioneered the study of what he called “split-brained” patients. A “split-brained” patient is a person who has had the two hemispheres of their brain disconnected to treat severe epilepsy. The left hand and eye supply data to the right hemisphere and the right hand and eye supply data to the left. In these “split-brained” patients tests were conducted to show that each half was isolated from the other. These same tests allowed the function of each half i...
" Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. 1989, suppl. ,pp. 13-i7. Lees, AJ.
Human beings rely on the most complicated known machinery; a human brain. Without the brain, simple tasks such as moving our body, breathing, and trying to eat food would be impossible. The brain controls our movements, is an indicator to senses whether it would be pain, smell or pleasure, and is responsible for the release of emotion. As important our brains are and as it continues to grow more powerful, it is very vulnerable to illnesses that have been caused by actions that affects the individual negatively and leaves them in trauma. The brain holds so many secrets and mysterious to how it truly functions, how certain things can affect
Our brains weigh about three pounds and are divided into two similar looking but functionally different hemisphere, the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. Both of which are connected by a large bundle of nerves called the corpus collosum. In some people with severe seizure disorders such as epilepsy, it was found that if this bundle of nerves was severed their seizure would either cease or a the very least be better controlled. From this surgical procedure it was discovered that the two hemispheres had different methods of processing information, as well as controlling parts of the body. The left hemisphere controls the right have of the body and the right hemisphere controls the left side.
Roger Sperry is one of the big Neurobiologists in the 1950’s. Sperry studied the relationship of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. In one of his experiments he flashed the word “Fork” in front of the patient. If the patient was asked to say the word he could not but if asked to right the word he would start to right the word “Fork”. This happed when the two brain hemispheres were disconnected from each other. At an another experiment he placed a toothbrush in the patients left hand and blind folded the patient and was asked to identify it they could not do it. But if placed in the right hand the patient would know right away what it was. That is just one of the types of study he did in his time.
R. L. Paul, M. M. (1972). The Species of the Brain Research, 1-19. pp. 113-117. S. A. Clark, T. A.
...owell, E. R., Thompson, P. M., & Toga, A. W. (2004). Mapping changes in the human cortex
there has been a lot of talk of left brain and right brain people. Levy's
The corpus callosum binds the left and right hemispheres of the brain together, both physically and communicatively. After this operation has been performed, there was a remarkable development with how we perceive things and some of the results showed how much we rely on the connection between the two halves of our brain. There are also advantages of having a split brain. A study performed by Rogers et al, 2004 found that when you have two halves of a brain then it increases your ability to both look for food and watch for predators at the same time. Possibly demonstrating that the connections between our ancestors’ brain hemispheres were less developed. Another advantage is having the ability to read two pages at once. Of course, there are more disadvantages than advantages of having a split brain. An example of one is the most famous split brain study of all time, Sperry, 1968. In this study each participant, all having two halves of a brain, was shown two different images. One in each visual field and when asked to draw the image they had just seen they would draw the image they saw on the left but they would describe it as the image they saw on the right. This shows that the left side of the brain, which controls the right visual field, contains the information to be able to describe an object when seen
...re of the brain is just half of the brain so why is it the only half being explored in school? This failure to confront the other hemisphere causes weakening in the right hemisphere since the right hemisphere isn?t being exercised.