You can either learn or remember. Researchers at Duke University used functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI) to demonstrate this competition in a group of college age adults. Their evidence is compelling. Many psychological studies have also shown that you can either listen for new information or consider your response to that information (remembering similar past events). One or the other – not both simultaneously.
New OR old rather than new AND old. You can either listen to your partner’s complaint OR search your memory for a snappy comeback – not both simultaneously.
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The problem, of course, arises when the switch is turned to focus the brain on remembering when learning is indicated – or visa versa. Too many times I’ve come back with a response to my wife’s information that was completely off or indicated that I was not intent or focused on what she was saying. Rather, I was “remembering” similar information – and probably getting side-tracked by a mind tangent – rather than “learning” I was “remembering”. Oops!
“I can do that, daddy!” My father heard these words often from me as a kid – especially after a short demonstration of a skill he was trying to teach me. He’d invariably turn the task over to me whereupon the task would get horribly bungled because I had no clue what I was doing. I was remembering a similar task rather than paying attention to the lesson at hand. The switch was in the wrong position. Oops!
So how does one manually turn the switch from one state to the other? Certainly this could be a valuable skill for many tasks including academic learning, attending to the needs of a partner, or learning how to operate equipment.
As learning new concepts mostly involves the right hemisphere while attending to memories is more concentrated in the left hemisphere, learning to manually switch brain dominance at will could assist one in “focusing” on the proper task at the proper time.
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Imagine a laser light beam through the center of your brain.
A simple method for manually switching brain dominance
- Imagine a spot in the very center of your cortex (upper brain). This will be the pivot point.
- Next imagine a laser light beam that originates in the distance to your right, through your right eye and pivot point, ending up on the left rear wall of your brain. You might look slightly toward the right of center to heighten the effect. Imagine the entire line like a light beam.
- This will tend to activate LEFT brain dominance – REMEMBERING
- To switch to learning, simply reverse the laser beam origin point to the left side of center – through the eye and the pivot point – to the right rear wall of the brain. Imagine the entire line like a light beam.
- This will tend to activate RIGHT brain dominance – LEARNING
At any moment you find yourself remembering when you want to be learning, just flash on the image of a laser beam from the LEFT side entering your eye, passing through the pivot point in the center of your brain, and illuminating the RIGHT rear wall of your brain.
Sure, doing the imagery is using memory (you must remember the imagery to use it). However, flashing on the image of the entire laser light beam will tend to jump you off remembering and back into learning.
With practice, you can use an anchoring technique to invoke the imagery. For example, whenever you imagine the laser beam from the left side, you might wiggle your left index finger in a certain way. Over time practicing associating the wiggling of your left index finger with the image of the laser beam from the left side, your brain will instantly evoke the learning mode whenever you wiggle your left index finger. The same could be done on the right side for remembering – a handy tool when you get out of class and need to find your car in the parking lot…
Need to remember a license plate number or a sequence of numbers or a math table or spelling list? Laser beam from the RIGHT! Need to understand that new concept in your physics or math class? Laser beam from the LEFT! Need to connect heart to heart with your spouse? Laser LEFT! Then RIGHT! First, left to “hear” him/her with intent to understand and learn; then right to store the new information and to associate with memories of sweetness, gentleness, kindness, and love. Respond from these memories. Then switch back left to “hear” the lesson.
For those readers familiar with Rapid Eye Technology (RET), you may appreciate how powerfully RET exercises the left-right axis – and includes up-down and forward-back as well. Switching rapidly between right and left sides tends to train the brain to do the same when not in a RET session.
RET in Learning – Remembering
In a RET session, we both remember and learn. We remember through “cell memory” – perceptions of hurt held in the body as important survival messages (true or not). Releasing the emotional energy held in these memories makes them less important to survival and available for normal storage – traumatic events become just events. Once the importance is released, the brain can much more easily switch to learning mode to learn the life lessons of those memories – extracting the “gold” and making future learning much easier to accomplish.
If you’ve not yet tried RET, you might find it interesting and useful. I’m still learning when to associate learning and when to associate remembering to a given situation. That is the subject of another post…
Study Citation:
When learning and remembering compete: A functional MRI study.
Huijbers W, Pennartz CM, Cabeza R, Daselaar SM (2009)
PLoS Biol 7(1): e1000011. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000011
I have a major problem with your analysis here.
First of all, you cite the research paper When learning and remembering compete: A functional MRI study but do not mention that the research paper does not mention anything about the eye/laser mechanism that you suggest will enable.
Second, you use the term “brain dominance” in referring to hemispheric switching. Even if switching in the manor you suggest were possible it is not a switch in hemispheric dominance as dominance refers to preference rather than ability. For example, most people have a preferred hand, they are either right- or left-handed. Their preferred hand is therefore their dominant hand. To suggest that they could alter that in a matter of seconds by moving their eyes would obviously be ridiculous. The brain is also a physiological part of the human body that exhibits dominant preferences, so to suggest that you could alter those inherent and learned preferences simply by moving your eyes is absurd.
What is known is that moving your eyes from left to right helps stimulate both hemispheres and has been shown in studies to aid memory recall. This however is as a result of the motor stimulation and has nothing whatsoever to do with sight or the visual cortex per se. Indeed, other forms of bi-lateral stimulation would work equally well as is demonstrated in many studies involving dyslexic patients.
The fact that learning and remembering are different and can conflict is however an interesting area of research as it may well lie at the heart of the reason why hemispheric specialisation developed in our human ancestors in the first place.
For more information on Brain Dominance visit http://www.mybrain.co.uk
For more information on eye movement uses in psychotherapy refer to the work of Dr. Francine Shapiro is credited with the development of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing). http://www.emdr.com/shapiro.htm
Alistair,
Thanks for the comment. However, I think you may have misread or misunderstood my post. I did not say you could switch preference from left to right – only temporary dominance. Dominance and preference are not synonymous in my understanding.
One brain hemisphere tends to dominate over the other during specific tasks – for example, the left hemisphere will tend to dominate during speech. Through habitually assigning a specific hemisphere to a specific task over time, a preference is developed – which will tend to rule over dominance for those tasks. However, I find no evidence to suggest that TEMPORARY brain dominance can’t be manipulated. According to Allen Sargent (“The Other Mind’s Eye), manually switching dominance has therapeutic value (I refer to Sargent’s “Hemispheric Integration” – what he used to call “Hemispheric Therapy”).
I agree with you fully that “To suggest that they could alter that [preference] in a matter of seconds by moving their eyes would obviously be ridiculous.” Habits are not so easily manipulated, in my opinion. And I’m not talking about preference here – only temporary, immediate brain hemispheric dominance. Just because I prefer to use my right hand doesn’t mean my left hand can’t do the current task – and maybe do it better.
I believe you can temporarily switch which brain hemisphere is MOSTLY tasked at the time of a specific behavior. AND, if that hemisphere is different from the one previously used for that task or behavior, a different outcome is likely. I’m only suggesting that the switch might be made manually through the use of imagination and attention.
If one thinking “mode” helps me learn while the other helps me remember, then possibly temporarily changing mode during a task in which I’ve mixed up those two tasks (learning and remembering) might be a useful resource.
Thanks for the link to more information on your web site.