Episode 19.
Top Brain, Bottom Brain

Question:

Key Points:

• There has been a concept of people being "Right Brained", meaning creative, or "Left Brained", meaning structured.
• Your actual, literal brain does not have any difference in processing on the right or the left side for being more creative or structured
• But, the concept of being "right brained" or "left brained" could still be valuable just in describing different types of people
• The right side of the brain does control the left side of the body a little bit more than the right side of the body and vice versa.
• The scientists who wrote the book: "Top Brain, Bottom Brain", used an FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine to be able to see what parts of the brain are being used for different tasks
• There are three parts of the brain: the cerebrum, cerebellum, and brain stem. (See diagram below)
• When discussing "top brain" vs "bottom brain", the scientists who wrote the book are only refering to the top and bottom of the cerebrum
• The "top brain" does our strategic thinking, whereas the "bottom brain" deals with inputs and outputs
• The top brain deals with more complicated processing, including how different parts of the environment are related to each other, e.g. to the right or the left
• A fascinating thing is that our bottom brain can process information in parallel, not just sequentially, but the top brian appears to process one thing at a time
• The scientists theorized that there are four cognitive modes. Everyone uses each of the modes sometime, but each of us uses one of the modes more than the others
• The four cognitive modes are:
  • Top Only: Stimulator Mode = Making plans and new ideas
  • Bottom Only: Perceiver Mode = understanding the environment but not making plans
  • Both: Mover Mode = Making plans with your top and immediately evaluating those plans in your current environment
  • Neither: Adapter mode = Willing to go with the flow because you're not evaluating your environment or making plans
• There is a quiz in the book and in the podcast to evaluate how much you use your top or bottom brain. Listen to the podcast or read the book to take the quiz
• The down side to the quiz in the book is that it only evaluates your usage of your top and bottom brain, not what mode you tend to be in
• A really interesting thing is that the four Cognative Modes identified, don't really seem to line up with quadrant theory, which is unique and interesting
• My personal opinion is that the cognitive modes actually lie on the borders between different personality types in quadrant theory. See below for a diagram

Pictures: