BRAIN BEAT

BRAIN BEAT
We are living in the age of the brain. Beginning in the 60's we became interested as a nation in physical exercise and it’s effect on the body. President John F. Kennedy urged the nation to be more physically fit. Then came the era of diet awareness. As a nation, we became interested, if not obsessed, over diet and it’s influence on the state of health. Within the last decade, with the emergence of new medical and scientific information, we have become fascinated with the function of the brain. We have the benefit of scientific data to help us understand how the thinking process works. We have known for some time, that the brain is divided into two hemispheres, right and left. Traditionally, the right hemisphere is the portion of the brain that governs ideas, while the left hemisphere governs physical matters, such as walking, talking, writing, etc. The corpus callosum, the membrane that divides the two hemispheres acts as a window through which the synaptic responses pass back and forth between the two hemispheres. When a thought is conceived in the right hemisphere, it has no influence of action or communication if the synapses cannot get into the left hemisphere. It is possible that there are those, like Einstein, Jefferson, and the boy cited above, who have intelligent, if not genius level thought processes who cnnot move the thoughts into the left brain to articulate those thoughts. How many of our population are prisoners in the right hemisphere of their brains. The playing of an instrument, dancing, singing, reciting poetry, all have something in common...it requires the integration of both hemispheres to function. With the aid of the technology of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) we can actually see the electrical impulses in the brain and witness the full integration of the brain when participation in musical activity takes place. In short, when we sing, dance, recite or play an instrument, we are drawing upon the compete resources of brain activity. It stands to reason then, that those who participate in these activities on a regular basis will transfer that brain activity to other activities as well. It seems as if Einstein was a “prisoner” in the right hemisphere of his brain, unable to convey the profound thoughts he was having into the left hemisphere in order to communicate them. Others like Edison, Disney and Jefferson seem to share the circumstance. Would history have had the same conclusion in the case of the three individuals cited above been the same without the use of playing the