Neuroscience for business

Pretty much all we thought we knew is false.

It is still often heard in popular culture that the left brain is rational / logical and the right brain is emotional / creative. This is in spite of the fact that this view was proven to be false 3 decades ago. So embarrassing was this failed view that it it was no longer “respectable” to hypothesise about differences in the two halves of the brain.

But the matter remains…There is no denying that they are different. The right hemisphere contains much more white matter than the left (in essence, insulation for the nerves). It is connected more broadly within itself and externally than is the left hemisphere and uses different neurotransmitters. So these differences are not minor.

Fast forward several decades and it appears that the long ignored differences in shape, structure and composition are important to function after all. These functional differences, whilst subtler than the old emotional/rational view, are no less marked.

Over the next few sections, we’ll discover how we can apply neuroscience to solve business problems.

So what’s going on and why?

Truths, half truths and hemispheres. How our brains are made up, how each side works differently and, most importantly, how we marketers can use this to our advantage.

It appears that what really differentiates the 2 hemispheres is the type of attention that they bring to the world. For very good evolutionary reasons, the left brain brings a very detailed, sequential and abstracted view to things that we already now to be important, like food, and ignores the unfamiliar. The right brain, in stark contrast, brings a much broader, uncommitted, holistic view and focusses on the new, the different and the incongruous.

These 2 types of attention are both vital, and are so important that the corpus callosum (the bit that bridges the 2 halves) functions to inhibit one or the other hemisphere allowing the currently active hemisphere to get on with its job whilst the other is pushed into the background.

Birds and other mammals have these left / right distinctions too, so clearly they are of enormous evolutionary importance. A basic example is this, whilst the left brain is bringing its very detailed focus to bear, perhaps on food we have found, in the background the right brain is broadly vigilant for threats, preventing something making a meal of us. So effective at this is the right brain that we can have often commenced evasive action before we are consciously aware of the threat.

Your instincts are more rational than you may think…

This kind of unconscious yet highly intelligent processing appears to be the the basis of intuition.

The right brain, noticing the what, processes the situation in a single leap, processes potential solutions, picks one and acts upon it often without anything surfacing to the conscious mind.

Outside of survival situations, this type of activity also results in the “ah ha” moment that is so familiar to many. After working on an idea or problem we are suddenly, after having left it for a while, presented with a fully formed answer.

If the right hand side of the brain needs very detailed information on a specific aspect of what it is processing, it is the left brain’s job to gather that and report it back for synthesis by the right hemisphere. If a detailed description of the solution / idea or whatever needs to be communicated, then again that is the left brain’s role.

If, however the situation changes and a new solution is required that comes back under the remit of the broad and flexible right.

More divisions

The right brain, noticing the what, processes the situation in a single leap, processes potential solutions, picks one and acts upon it often without anything surfacing to the conscious mind.

Outside of survival situations, this type of activity also results in the “ah ha” moment that is so familiar to many. After working on an idea or problem we are suddenly, after having left it for a while, presented with a fully formed answer.

If the right hand side of the brain needs very detailed information on a specific aspect of what it is processing, it is the left brain’s job to gather that and report it back for synthesis by the right hemisphere. If a detailed description of the solution / idea or whatever needs to be communicated, then again that is the left brain’s role.

If, however the situation changes and a new solution is required that comes back under the remit of the broad and flexible right.

So what?

These findings, amongst many others, really give an insight into how human beings notice, process decide and act upon stimuli in the environment.

It is therefore vital that we take them into account in business: when planning a marketing campaign, when communicating internally, even when considerating how to motivate teams.

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