noemata on Sun, 15 Feb 2004 14:27:29 +0100 (CET)


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<nettime> Code and its Double (in relation to brain asymmetry)


Code and its Double (cont'd)

- Codework in relation to brain asymmetry and neuropsychology
___


- The results of studies of nonhuman species show that lateral asymmetry
is a property not unique to humans. The demonstration of asymmetry in
non-human brains implies that asymmetry in the human brain is directly
related neither to handedness nor to language but rather to analysis of
sensory information and control of movement.*

Comment: Asymmetry is at the code level, processing information in double
modi.

- Brain asymmetry summary: From these basic ideas about distinct functions
of the two hemispheres has arisen the idea that the hemispheres represent
two distinct modes of cognitive processing (see Springer and Deutch).The
left hemisphere operates in a more logical,analytical,computer-like
fashion,analyzing stimuli input sequentially and abstracting the relevant
details to which it attaches verbal labels.The right hemisphere is
primarily a synthesizer,more concerned with the overall stimulus
configuration,and organizes and processes information as gestalts,or
wholes.*

Comment: Brain asymmetry correlations to codework, jot version:
    - Left hemisphere - time, analysis, language, symbol, code, text,
    instruction, execution, .....
    - Right hemisphere - space, synthesis, matter, data, ambience,
    context, surface, code, diffusion, .....

- Laterality leads to the notion that two different minds control our
behavior.*

Comment: Which doesn't mean they can be separated. Code's double are the
two-fold of information processing, time- and space-based, which
correlates to code as language/formatives, and code as matter/form, or
again, as instruction and data in the interpreting machine.

- The left hemisphere plays a special role in producing and understanding
language.. whereas the right hemisphere specializes in perceiving and
synthesizing nonverbal information..*

Comment: Code and its double as text and context, or as other traditional
dichotomies - active/passive, light/shadow, order/chaos, the one/the
other, intelligence/monster, etc. which is also reflected in the
traditional meaning of sinister as left, ie. right-hemisphere.

- Stimulation can produce what Penfield called ?interpretive ?and
?experiential ?responses.These uncommon but often highly reliable
phenomena include alterations in the interpretation of the patient?s
surroundings,such as deja vu,fear,and dreaming states, and the
reproduction of visual or auditory aspects of specific earlier
experiences.That patients report specific ?memories ?in response to
specific stimulation. These phenomena usually arise from tissue showing
epileptogenic discharge,but there is an asymmetry in their
occurrence:stimulation of the right temporal lobe produces these phenomena
more frequently than does stimulation of the left temporal lobe,which
suggests that the right hemisphere has perceptual functions not shared by
the left.*

- The Kimura experiments imply that the left hemisphere is specialized for
processing language-related sounds,whereas the right hemisphere processes
music-related sounds.There is,however,another interpretation.It is
possible that the asymmetry is related to the temporal or spectral
structure of the sounds ?their rhythm and frequency ?rather than to
language and music themselves.Consider,for example,the finding by Papcun
and colleagues. They showed that Morse-code operators have a right-ear
superiority for the perception of the code,even though the sounds are
distinguished only by their temporal structure.*

Comment: The temporal is on the code source side, of running code,
executables, performatives, which refracts into space, code matter,
spectrum, specters. There's no fundamental difference, like instruction is
also data, but of interpretation, processing speed, frequencies, and like
the continuum of spacetime.

- Rudel and coworkers found that both blind and sighted subjects read
Braille more rapidly with the left hand.Some children are actually fluent
readers with the left hand but are totally unable to read with the
right.Because Braille patterns are spatial configurations of dots, this
observation is congruent with the proposal that the right hemisphere has a
role in processing spatial information that is not shared by the left.*

Comment: Code and its double ar both active, both coded, though the former
often is interpreted as instruction and the latter as data, or light and
shadow.

- Table. Summary of data on cerebral lateralization*
Function        Left hemisphere     Right hemisphere
--------        ---------------     ----------------
Visual system   Letters, words      Complex geometric patterns
                                    Faces
Auditory system Language-related    Nonlanguage environmental sound
                  sound             Music
Somatosensory   ?                   Tactile recognition of complex
                                      system patterns, Braille
Movement        Complex voluntary   Movements in spatial patterns
                  movement
Memory          Verbal memory       Nonverbal memory
Language        Speech              Prosody?
                Reading
                Writing
                Arithmetic
Spatial                             Geometry
  processes                         Sense of direction
                                    Mental rotation of shapes

- Several authors (for example,Efron)have suggested that it is not motor
control itself that is located in the left hemisphere but rather the
capacity for the fine resolution of stimuli in time.*

Comment: Which is again to state code's inseparability in spacetime, as
speed and matter, running code and output.

- Zatorre proposed that the auditory cortices in the two hemispheres are
therefore specialized such that temporal resolution is better in the left
and spectral resolution is better in the right auditory areas.*

Comment: Or again like the theater and its double as time and spectrum.

- Rather than specifying different processing of specified psychological
processes,other specialization models focus on the idea that the two
hemispheres might process information in distinctly different ways.*

Comment: Which is basically code and its double.

- The first clear proposal of [different information processing] was made
by Josephine Semmes in 1968.On the basis of the results of her previous
studies of World War II veterans suffering from penetrating brain
injuries,Semmes concluded that the left hemisphere functions as a
collection of focalized regions,whereas the right hemisphere functions
more diffusely.*

Comment: No comment.

- A large lesion of the right hemisphere produces many more deficits than
would be predicted from the total of smaller lesions because an entire
functional field is removed.A large lesion of the left hemisphere produces
many deficits simply because many small focal regions have been destroyed;
that is,in the left hemisphere, the total is equal to the sum of the
parts. Semmes proposed that this differential organization of the two
hemispheres is advantageous for efficient control of their respective
functions.The diffuse organization of the right hemisphere is seen as
advantageous for spatial abilities,because spatial analysis requires that
different sensations (visual,auditory, tactile)be integrated into a single
percept.Language functions,in contrast,remain discrete individual units in
the left hemisphere.*

Comment: Code and its double creates and maintains different domains,
different magnitudes and spectrums of frequencies.

- People use the word sinister as a synonym for wicked or evil.Originally
a Latin word meaning ?left-hand side,?our contemporary English meaning
implies that left-handedness has been historically viewed at best as
strange or unusual.*

Comment: Which is to say that code's double has its own intelligence, far
from being dead output from executions.

- At least six significant behavioral differences are sex related:verbal
ability, visuospatial analysis,mathematical ability,perception,motor
skills,and aggression.Although the precise causes of cognitive sex-related
differences are unknown,biology likely plays a part.Consider the following
data:Richard Harshman and his associates,in a very ambitious study of the
interaction of sex and handedness in cognitive abilities,found a
significant interaction between sex and handedness;that is,sex-related
differences in verbal and visuospatial behavior vary as a function of
handedness.(Recall that Witelson found that callosal size also varies by
sex and handedness.)It is difficult to imagine how biological or
environmental factors alone could account for this result.It is thus very
plausible to account for sex-related differences partly by neurological
factors that may be modulated by the environment.*

Comment: Introducing gender issues in codework.

- In an analysis of reading skills,Dennis and her coworkers found that
both hemispheres had almost equal ability in higher-order reading
comprehension; however,the left hemisphere is superior to the right in
reading and spelling unfamiliar words and in using sentence structure to
achieve fluent reading. The left hemisphere also reads prose passages with
greater decoding accuracy, more fluency,and fewer errors that violate the
semantic and syntactic struc- ture of the sentence.The superiority of the
left hemisphere seems to be its ability to manipulate and exploit language
rules.Yet the right hemisphere is not without its strengths in
language.Performance is better with the right hemisphere in a task that
requires learning an association between nonsense words and symbols.*

Comment: Parsing and (re-)integration of code, code working on code, as
instruction or data - data as instruction, or instruction as data.

- In summarizing the results of studies on language,Dennis suggests that,
if written language structure is thought of as a combination of meaning
cues (morphology),sound cues (phonology),and picture cues (logography),
then the isolated left hemisphere will show superior performance with
morphology and phonology and inferior performance with logographic
cues.The isolated right hemisphere will show superior performance with
logographic cues and inferior performance with morphological and
phonological cues. Kohn and Dennis found an almost analogous pattern of
results on tests of visuospatial function.They observed that,although
patients with right hemispherectomies performed normally on simple tests
of visuospatial functions such as drawing,they were significantly impaired
on complex tests such as negotiating a maze and reading a map.*

Comment: The time of code and space of its double.

- To summarize,each hemisphere can assume some of its opposite ?s
functions if the opposite hemisphere is removed in he course of
development, but neither hemisphere is totally capable of mediating all of
the missing hemisphere?s functions.Thus,although the developing brain
gives evidence of considerable plasticity,there is convincing evidence
against equipotentiality: both hemispheres appear to have a processing
capacity that probably has an innate structural basis.*

Comment: Which is to state code's doubleness, the interweaving of
different processing, interpreted instruction or data for each other.

- All models of cerebral development must answer he question of how
functions become restricted to one hemisphere rather than becoming
bilateral. The interactive parallel-development hypothesis answers that
question. In a series of papers,Morris Moscovitch emphasized the
possibility that one hemisphere actively inhibits the other,thus
preventing the contralateral hemisphere from developing similar functions.
This active inhibition presumably develops at about age 5, as the corpus
callosum becomes functional. [as inhibitor]*

Comment: In regard to codework the corpus callosum is the mediator and
inhibitor of code from its double, and occupies the border between sense
and surface, time and space, source code and code source, speed and
matter, and assures their workings by inhibiting self-reference (code as
nothing) and decoding (of the double), producing meaning and remains.


___

* From _Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology_, Fifth Edition.
Bryan Kolb and Ian Q. Whishaw, Univ. of Lethbridge, Alberta, 2003:
- Cerebral asymmetry
- Variations in cerebral asymmetry
URL: http://noemata.net/ideareal/cerebral-asymmetry.txt (25K)




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