aisnob.com** When you go online and do a search, your name probably pops up—if you're famous or someone famous is your relative. And sometimes you'll see your name on the TV or in a newspaper article, even though you can't remember writing or saying the words in question. Famous people probably share some of these connections, but they don't all have family rants. Why is this happening? Doctors in England had suspected it for years, but only recently did the explanation fall into place. British researcher Dr. D. Ewen Cameron led experiments on more than a hundred American children between 1945 and 1970. Cameron's techniques, sometimes involving hypnosis and drugging, involved removing fear in children while stimulating the right side of their brain. Dr. Cameron's work is infamous because it involves a shocking number of egregious abuses. He convinced parents that he could turn homosexuality and schizophrenia into geniuses with his therapy. And he left the field of psychiatry after being discredited for some of the worst cases. Dr. Cameron's work was not just unethical, it was immoral. Still, he is a father of the "hemispheric synchronization theory," which is now accepted and thought to occur in most people at some point. When you are talking to someone, the two hemispheres of your brain communicate with each other, the left side talking to the right. (If you are a lefty and are reading this in a mirror, you may have to adjust your neck so you can see the text.) The right side of the brain often receives far more input than the left side because it is used for speech and perception, but the left side is the center of attention. If you're watching a scene and a person walks into the picture, the left side sees her first. So if you're reading a newspaper and it's in the context of your visual field—a scene, a room, or something else—left-brain information would overwhelm right-brain information. When you are reading in that way, you're right-hemispheric. So how does it affect you? Let's say you have a roommate who talks about what she is going to do in the evening or her latest project. You say, "Oh, she's been wanting to do that for a while." A person with right-hemispheric dominance might reply, "Oh, yeah? How long ago was that?" But a person with left-hemispheric dominance would have probably said, "I don't know what she's been doing lately." And the reverse is true if you're doing something. Let's say you and your partner are in a room when your partner says, "Hey, guess what? I can't get that stain out of the carpet! Maybe you should talk to them about it." You'd probably turn toward your partner and think, "Oh, yeah? Maybe you should talk to _them_." The point is, you don't want people knowing what you are thinking. If they do, it's too hard to keep up the pretense of a "social" personality and a "private" personality. "If you're left-hemispheric dominant," says therapist Mark Dombeck, Ph.D., "you are probably more interested in keeping that world private and private thoughts." And if you're right-hemispheric dominant, you want your words and actions to match, Dombeck says. If you do have a left-hemispheric dominance, you may also have an easier time staying current with your surroundings. If you had a fight with someone the day before and he comes over, the left side of your brain might remember the name of the other person who was fighting with you, and when he comes to your door, you might remember him. You can get up and answer the door with a smile on your face even if you're mad. A left-hemispheric person can be "smarter and more observant," Dr. Dombeck says. How do you know? It's not easy to know if you're right- or left-hemispheric dominant. Most people have no idea. That's because you can be left-hemispheric dominant but still have problems. Or you can have a lot of practice making eye contact and have the ability to keep a conversation going with a group of people. If the left side of your brain is functioning correctly, those are some of its functions. It's better to realize that you have the right side of your brain working at something, Dr. Dombeck says, than to pretend that the left side is working. Here's an exercise that might tell you something about your dominance, or it might help you if you don't know: Imagine two things that are of equal importance to you. Maybe it's a vacation or a new dog. One is important to your happiness, and the other is not. Imagine having a party or a conversation at your house. The first thing you will think about is the decision of whether to invite your partner, or the choice of food for dinner. The second thing you will think about is picking your favorite shoes from the closet. Left-hemispheric dominance would mean that you would automatically think about who you're going to be with and the food before thinking about your shoes. You can tell you're left-hemispheric dominant if you think of your shoes before anything else, no matter how important they may be. Left-hemispheric dominance also means thinking in images and symbols. This means it is common for left-hemispheric people to learn faster by reading rather than writing. So if you know what it's like to learn while reading—you can learn more things at once by reading books or listening to a presentation than by listening to someone talk—and your work or school requires written tests or you have to write reports, left-hemispheric dominance would be part of the reason you might have a hard time with your studies. What is worse, if you're dominant left and can't spell or read, that leaves a major hole in your knowledge. Left-hemispheric dominance is also the reason you are not visual learners—you only really see things in your mind's eye. So the left-hemispheric person is more likely to be shy because he is so afraid of making mistakes. If you're right-hemispheric dominant, you may find this book is easy for you to follow because you find written words easy to remember. You might be able to remember and repeat things from this book while looking at it. It might feel like you are reading what you have written. You can talk about what's in the book, and if it's in the form of information, it might sound like you are giving a speech or a presentation. Are you left- or right-hemispheric dominant? Write down the following tasks that you know how to do. If you can't think of these as left- or right-dominant tasks, you may want to try this test. Left-dominant: * You write by drawing pictures * You visualize or imagine things from other people's words * You remember a name by seeing it in your mind * You understand the difference between words and ideas Right-dominant: * You write by spelling the word out * You read out loud to yourself or someone else * You remember the names of things by reading them * You rely on the sense of touch more than your eyes to tell you what something looks like You may never have thought about why your brain is different, but chances are you have noticed. If you've thought you were left-hemispheric dominant because you have trouble remembering things or you find it easier to remember people's names if they are written down than if you are telling them by name, you've made your own discovery. If you're thinking you're right-hemispheric dominant because you find it difficult to concentrate or read through what's on a page of writing, you've made another discovery. And if you have discovered you're left-hemispheric dominant, you may have felt like you're stupid, like you can't learn to do things right or that you are doing something wrong. And your partner may feel like you're too hard to talk to or understand. But if you find out that you're not right-hemispheric dominant, you may want to do an exercise that will help your communication. Your left side of the brain might make you feel too shy to talk or understand what someone is saying. Right-dominant When you read or talk with someone, the right side of your brain is probably the dominant side. So it's worth thinking about whether there are ways you can use your right side to your advantage. It's a fairly common assumption in people's right-dominant brains that their left side of the brain is a good place to retreat to. They read things that their left side of the brain has processed and go back to a