Iain McGilchrist

The solution appears to have been the brain's separate hemispheres. Each of these neuronal masses is sufficient in itself and on its own to sustain consciousness. And since attention is an aspect of consciousness (a machine can carry out tasks, but it cannot attend) each can therefore attend to the world in a different way. What we call our consciousness moves back and forth between them seamlessly, drawing on each as required, and often very rapidly.

I am not here going to attempt a summary of the differences in the kind of world that each hemisphere brings about. The list is very extensive, as must be the case, since each hemisphere plays a part in everything we experience.

The left hemisphere, we learnt, was rational and linguistic, while the right hemisphere was pink and