Page 198 - A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

became upset. When their beloved old family dog died, Fred sat placidly eating
popcorn, watching his wife and children cry as if it were a scene out of a movie.
What made these changes more difficult to understand was that Fred seemed
to have retained his intelligence—even his formidable way with numbers. He
could still quickly work up a business profit-and-loss statement and solve
complex algebra problems. One interesting anomaly, however, was that if Fred
made a mistake in his calculations, concluding something nonsensical, such as

that a hot dog stand had a loss of nearly a billion dollars, it didn’t bother him.
There was no big-picture “click” that said, “Wait a minute, that answer doesn’t
make sense.”
It turns out that Fred is a typical victim of “broad-perspective perceptual
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disorder of the right hemisphere.” Fred’s stroke had incapacitated broad areas of
the right hemisphere of his brain. He could still function, but only partially.

Although we need to be careful about faulty and superficial “left brain/right
brain” assumptions, we also don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater
and ignore worthwhile research that gives intriguing hints about hemispheric
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differences. Fred reminds us of the dangers of not using our full cognitive
abilities, which involve many areas of our brain. Not using some of our abilities
isn’t as devastating for us as it is for Fred. But even subtle avoidance of some of
our capabilities can have a surprisingly negative impact on our work.