Why This Blog

It is a known fact that the brain is a whole, integrated, interdependent organ, that uses both hemispheres in all tasks, all the time. I experience the use of my whole brain like everyone else.

However, I consider myself a predominantly Visual, Right Brain individual when it comes to how I experience the world. My attention is broad, from an overview perspective. I seem to "lead" with this right hemisphere's global orientation. I think in pictures. 

Others in my life describe the same experience. My son recognizes his own globally attentive, right hemisphere dominant brain. He represents thoughts primarily in pictures supported by strong left hemisphere, auditory skills.

We use our whole brain, but our "take" on the world, is largely Right Brained. This is also true for the children and adults with whom I work and have worked over the 20 plus years of my career as a clinically trained Speech-Language Pathologist. 

Bright Brained is what I like to call us: brilliant, right brained individuals. 

This blog is about honoring, celebrating, respecting and promoting our right hemisphere skills. And about empowering individuals who are predominantly right brain oriented in the world to know themselves deeply as learners.

We all experience learning differently. Learning Styles and understanding the attributes of the brain's hemispheres are valuable information for being empowered as a learner. 

We "dis" children who are not reading upon entrance to formal schooling (usually by age five or six in the U.S.), by labeling them disordered, disabled, dyslexic. We tell them they will never catch up.

This happens, I believe, because our culture is dominated by left hemisphere thinking. We are enamored with data, knowledge, fact, and crystalized, visible intelligence. We honor and reward the acquisition of information that is discrete, detailed, and decontextualized. 

Iain McGilchrist, psychiatrist, writer and lecturer, wrote a beautiful book called The Master and His Emissary that explains our Western culture's reliance upon our left hemisphere to the detrimental exclusion and disrespect of the right. This imbalance of power toward a left-focused world has had, and will continue to have, dire consequences on our culture, our humanity and our future civilization.

The greatest gift I think we can give each other is acceptance and appreciation for who we are. It's time to stop "dissing" difference. And instead to see difference is Divine.

We are all unique and this diversity is planned for perpetuity.  Thomas Armstrong, in his book The Power of Neurodiversity discusses at length our culture's tendency to pathologize individuals who deviate from the norm. Instead, he believes as do I, that our differences are our gifts. We need them to survive as a species. Quoting the journalist who first used the term in 1998, Armstrong writes: "Neurodiversity may be every bit as crucial for the human race as biodiversity is for life in general." Since that statement by Harvey Blume in the Atlantic, the social scientist, Judy Singer, the parent of a neurodiverse child with Aspergers, is credited with coining the term Neurodiversity, which has continued to expand as a worthy concept to embrace.

So let's celebrate our different brains and explore the beauty of being Bright Brained.

Join the conversation if you are interested in learning processes, the brain or you know someone who is a visual thinker, orienting in the world from a right hemisphere, overview attentional style and right hemisphere strengths.

Welcome!