SCIENCE: QUIET AND CREATIVITY

QUIET - the book

Cain, Susan.  2012, 2013.  Quiet, the Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.  Broadway Books.  New York.  352 pp.  Just read this book at the end of January 2014.  Very worth reading.  Today (February 2, 2014) I was reviewing in my mind some of the things from it I wanted to blog about (evolutioninsights.blogspot.com) and, as I was thinking about how creativity is enhanced by left-brain/right-brain cooperation and how creativity seems to be associated with introversion and right brain activity, the following seemed evident.

INTROVERT-EXTROVERT-AMBIVERT RATIO

Cain discusses probable causes of introvert/extrovert personality types and sees both hereditary and environmental factors as causes, including one known gene, as having some influence.  I see that a simple explanation of chance expression of left brain versus right brain dominance could be a major factor.  Once both hemispheres are more equally integrated into brain activity, one might be more of an ambivert.  Until that point is reached the ratio early in life would be close to 1:1.  

CREATIVITY

I agree with her arguments that introversion is associated with the careful thought leading to creative results.  But I have personally made the transition from right brain dominance and introversion to either extroversion or, more likely, ambivert status.  I still find quiet time pleasant and useful for thinking.  My discovery of my transition was a few dozen years ago as I was reflecting about left-brain/right brain matters and the need for me to use more graphic material in lectures to accommodate those students who were right-brain dominant.  I became aware that I was thinking in words that I was hearing in my mind.  At that time I could not visualize a picture of anything in my mind, the same mind that in the mid 1960's I could visualize strategy for a three dimensional tick-tac-toe game that some faculty were playing on Western Michigan University's new IBM 1620 computer.  I had lost my first game with it, but, after a night's interrupted sleep pondering it, I won the next game.  I had changed.

HEMISPHERIC DOMINANCE AND CAREERS

I spent some time considering a research project enlisting honors college students in a longitudinal study of hemispheric dominance.  A math professor friend noted the mathematicians had been discussing left-brain dominance as characteristic of their profession.  But he was right-brained and taught an area of math more visually oriented, I think geometry.  I wanted to have students check the ratio in various academic disciplines, both in faculty and undergraduate majors.  In particular, follow-up on students from their freshman year to later years would show whether they should be counseled out of a field or left to make the transition to suitable hemispheric activity.

I did not pursue the project, perhaps because I was an INTP personality type, and/or I didn't have the disposition to deal with the ambiguities involved in getting approval from the university's human subjects review board as needed for projects when people are the subject.  But from personal experience, I knew that I changed.

My understanding of the evolutionary origin of hemispheric dominance in humans came with my being called upon to teach introductory zoology about the end of the 1970's.  After 20 years teaching invertebrate type classes I wanted to know the reason the left brain controls the right side of the body and the right brain controls the left side of the body.  To shorten the story, it wasn't in the books, but it became apparent that it was the most economical way to integrate vision into a unitary binocular vision for us.  The role of association neurons connecting left and right neurons controlling structures of invertebrates contributed to the answer.  I gave a presentation at the state academy on the topic but did not publish the story.  The enormous demands of brain space for good vision selected for a large visual cortex.  But the area for nervous control of the physical body do not demand much space for transmission of motor impulses.  So rather than having massive crossing over from both visual hemispheres, the partial crossing over of visual and complete crossing over for motor nerve enervation was achieved through natural selection.  As other portions of the brain enlarged along with the visual cortex, the portions allocated to thought did not have right and left functions so opposite sides of those regions could specialize as we see in humans.

CONCLUSION

Both personality types may have creativity in their future as they optimize hemispheric use with a balance appropriate to the business at hand.  I might never have reached this understanding if my nine-year old verbal brother had not belabored his tongue-tied little five-year old brother with the maxim that if you couldn't express your idea you didn't know it.  I was not literally tongue-tied, but I clearly understood concepts I could not find words to express.  My transition from introversion to what I am today is a long story, I will spare you the details.

My understanding of hemispheric dominance and creativity long ago was why I argued study of biology was exceptionally important in a liberal arts education.  Laboratory and field study of organisms exercised the right brain and explaining and describing exercised the left brain; cooperatively using both sides enhanced the result.  Actually, any subject that has physical aspects and written and verbal aspects should have similar value.  

Perhaps the link between left-brain with math, music, and speech skills, versus the right-brain with visual, graphic, and mechanical skills starts early in life.  It may never be known if more right-brained children developed after television began to replace radio.  But there are good reasons to think both physical and mental health are enhanced by adequate diverse physical exercise.  Where do smell and aromatherapy fit in?  We are complex creatures in a complex world; I will leave it at that.

Joseph G. Engemann      February 2, 2014