Hello,

I was wondering if activity-induced brain dominance shifts could occur; i.e. Can the nature of work that we do induce (even slightly)changes in our brain dominance?

I had this weird experience some time ago. It was at a time when I had to prepare for a very important exam (which, by the way, had memorization of large amounts of facts and formulas etc). I had to spend a lot of time doing monotonous tasks such as memorizing things that were of little personal concern to me. This was all against my will but still, I had to do it to escape the consequences. Times were very intense and monotonous back then. It was at this time that I learnt to write poems and be artistic. I wrote pieces of text that were artistic and beautiful. Infinitely strange, however, was the fact that I could just sit in front of my PC and instantly bring poems out of nowhere! It was so bizarre and entertaining.

After those exams were over however, I was free from any obligation. Things weren't monotonous anymore. It was also at this time that I couldn't write even one beautiful poem! I tried hard, but still failed to write a poem.

Now for the interesting part. I recently read from an anonymous source that, meditation involving continual repetition of words made the left brain to doze off. This, as explained, was supposedly due to the fact that left brain was logically consistent, analytical and thus, less interested in doing monotonous activities. The dozing of the left brain, in turn, relatively stimulated the right brain which is more actively responsible for phenomena such as self-realization, imagistic thinking etc. And, this explained the spiritual moments (often logically inconsistent; perhaps because of the dozing off of the left brain) encountered during meditation. These spiritual moments also seem to relieve mental stress and tension caused due to the counter-benefits of the left brain's frequent encounters of the logical inconsistencies common in our societies.

Though I don't know how true this is, it seems to make sense esp. considering the nature of my personal experience. So, I was interested in knowing if activities could induce slight changes in brain dominance.

I would be interested to receive expert opinions on this matter.


I would also like to receive links of studies/reports/articles concerning inquiries on this phenomena.


Regards.

I think you might be on to something.

It's a good question, your Brain is like your body - what you feed it will determine what it outputs.

So if you surrounded yourself with art and music, focused on creative projects and drew or played an instrument an hour a day - theoretically your right brain would become more active.

Another point is the TMS experiments involving drawing. When your brain is on a certain frequency, it is capable of doing things which it normally cannot. When they used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to cause the brain to enter into a desired frequency, this resulted in a dramatically increased ability to perform creative tasks such as drawing - even if the subject was previously a poor artist.

So, I dont see any reason why not. It would appear - at least from the TMS experiments, that left or right brain dominance is partially determined by the frequency at which ones brain is at.

mm...that sounds interesting...where can I get a headstart on this brain frequency thing? I'm sort of an amateur in pursuit of understanding the brain.

Can you give me any links to articles or may be suggest a book or something of that sort?