Sequential Brains, Parallel Minds

For a few days now I've been finding myself cycling about, showering, eating, even writing and talking on the phone or with other people, even talking to other people and thinking about this idea of how comics and brains (and minds) are closely related.
The basic premise (as it has been for a long while, since a good two month meditation retreat managed to surface - among many things) is that comics work as a kind of an aphorism to the way the brain and the mind operate.

Recently I saw a video clip on TedTalks that really had an impact on me. A good friend sent it to me and I'm now placing it here so that, if you want, you can check it out as well;

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

So, if we broadly say that the left hemisphere of the brain is more responsible for memory, action, decision making, prevision, the filtering of hypotheses, and that the right hemisphere is more connected to the "nowness", the being in the moment, the acute perception of what's happening, right now, the feeling, the intuition, we end up seeing the human brain as being two different processors working synergetically. On one hand we have a parallel computer. It's all about what's arriving now, what's flowing inside itself and coming in through our astouding sensory system. On the other hand we have a serial computer who, by relying on memory of past experiences is projecting consequences and possible courses of action in response to what's present.
So one half of our brain is worried about sequences. The other is just accessing what's there. So one is always looking for completion (doomed to never really reach it for change is always occurring) and the other is always complete (for all there is is simply all that's there). And if we look deep enough inside ourselves, we can see hints for this. Usual feelings of dissatisfaction easily mixing with the seemingly contradictory knowings of our shortcomings and hopes.

But what has all this to do with comics?

Well, on a first instance, comics are about words and images. Sequential art, remember? (thanks Will Eisner)

Now, with words we more or less take is a steak. Even if want to swallow it whole, we still need to chew and swallow it bit by bit. But images are somehow easier to enter. They take less time to be absorbed. In a fraction of a second we can read the image that contains the panels that will take us a few seconds to absorb.

Now this may seem a little bit strange because, in fact we intuitively know (or feel?...) that the image has more content than the words... more on this later.

So, in a way, what I'm trying to say is that images are more akin to the right brain and words to the left. It's like feelings and thoughts. You know how you feel instantly. But to say it in words might take a lifetime. Especially because the nuances of what we feel have seldom been described to us and are rarely used to getting on with life. One could almost say that the left brain is geared to get on with things and the right to appreciate whatever it is we're experiencing.
(in fact the right brain is where the experience is located - which kind of hints to me that the right brain kind of has priority over the left...)

Let's imagine that we're reading a comic.
We open the page and BOOOOM!! We have beautiful imagery flooding our right hemisphere. We still don't know what the heck is the comic about on that first page and our right brain is already immersed in the visuals of the page, the tactile sensations, the sounds around us and, of course, the left brain catching up to this fresh new torrent of information.
The left brain catches up. We move from the left upper corner of the page to the right, progressively making our way down the page, noticing captions and speech baloons, sound effects and other visuals that will help us recreate more fully the expected sensory experience for this page. The left brain is quickly catching up. It's seeing the words right now and making billiions of connections faster than we could possibly track. And yet we feel it all simply by recognising the words. At each word, at each set of words, the whole spectrum of our memory is scrutinised, trying to ascertain exactly what is the relevance of that word to ourselves and, within context. But in order to ascertain the context more precisely the left brain needs to connect with the right. It needs to return to the nowness, where all the raw information is contained and make new connections, select different aspects and filter them differently. Our eyes jump from panels to captions, speech balloons to images, we move through the gutters between panels, recreating the passing of time and a change of moment, we jump back and forth between words and images. The brain buzzes with activity. We find ourselves enjoying a good comic!

But what does this mean?
For me it means that through the process of reading comics, of going backwards and forth with words and images, naturally reinforces the communication between the two hemispheres. By placing two similar opposing experiences: one that is very much instantaneous and another which is establishing connections and filtering through a maze of probabilities.
It seems obvious that by engaging regularly on such an exercise (an exercise that is not merely of following a general sequence - like most literature or of relaxing into a state of being, of being guided through a set of predetermined experiences - like film) the way our brain interacts with itself becomes more fluid. Not only our ability to create patterns increases (to extract meaning from a particular experience) but we also become highly involved with the experience itself. The raw power of images.

So why the title?
The title hints at this idea that our brains are increasingly used to be sequential machines. We receive a particular set, an input, and we are asked for a solution, an output. But that is not the sole nature of our minds. Our minds are also fully functioning, fully rooted experiential machines. Contemplation is one of our given rights. In fact it is crucial for a sucessful survival. With accurate input of information, we cannot hope to sustain an efficient living state.

My feel is that comics somehow provide an easy and powerful insight into the nature of our being. Both metaphorically, both in terms of ideas and concepts wanting to be shared, but also, and perhaps most importantly by their very nature. A nature born of our own nature and perhaps closest to it than we might dare imagine.


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From here on it would be interesting to analyse the differences between North American, European and Asian comics. Also the historical evolution of comics and language. And just what the heck is the role consciousness plays amidst all of this. After all consciousness is surely more than just the brain or the mind? Right? (or Left?!...)