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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) # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net