WHOLE BRAIN QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS TO ENQUIRIES ABOUT WHOLE BRAIN THINKING

This page includes whole brain questions and answers about left brain and right brain thinking and Ned Herrmann and his success in creating the H.B.D.I.; the whole brain model; and thinking preferences profiles.

As a professional artist for many years, Ned Herrmann became curious about the nature and source of creativity. Upon exploration, it became suddenly clear to him that the source of creativity was the brain.

Pursuing that "Aha!" led to the Whole Brain concept and the development of the H.B.D.I. (the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument, a 120-question self diagnostic survey form that enables a profile of your unique thinking preferences to be produced).

At the time this occurred in 1976, Ned was Head of Management Education at General Electric's Management Development Institute.

His understanding of the brain as a source of creativity was quickly followed by his second insight that the brain was also the central organ in learning.

His dual profession as an artist and educator gave him the opportunity to apply his new understanding to whole brain creative learning.

G.E. supported Ned's experiments and applications during the late 1970's and it was these activities that led to the development of the thinking preferences concept and the H.B.D.I.

Roger Sperry, Robert Ornstein, Henry Mintzberg, Paul MacLean, Joseph Bogen and Victor Bunderson

Is the brain dominance theory and the Whole Brain concept valid? What proof exists?

The brain dominance concept has been strongly validated in a number of different ways.

First, through the research and experimentation of leaders in the field including Roger Sperry, Robert Ornstein, Henry Mintzberg and Michael Gazzanniga.

Second, it has been validated by the hundreds of EEG experiments carried out personally by Ned Herrmann.

Third, it has been validated by the public demonstrations conducted by Ned Herrmann over the past 12 years.

Fourth, it has been validated by specific validation studies carried out by C. Victor Bunderson and James Olsen of WICAT and later by C. Victor Bunderson and Kevin Ho and, in parallel with those studies, by validation experiments carried out by Schkade and Potvin at the University of Texas.

Additional validation comes from the more than 60 doctoral dissertations based on both the H.B.D.I. and The Whole Brain concept.

In addition to these formal studies, there have been thousands of anecdotal validations from people who have acknowledged their personal H.B.D.I. Profile as an accurate description of themselves and others in their private and work lives.

The answers to these whole brain questions are well documented in the validation appendix of Ned's book, "The Creative Brain", which summarises the comprehensive validation studies.

It is significant to note that the result of all of the validation studies carried out over the 24-year history of the H.B.D.I. are positive. There has been no negative input. Experts in the field consider this to be rare.

The answer to these whole brain questions, in the vast majority of cases, must be that how a person sees himself or herself is the most accurate and most informative view of themselves that can be held.

Even though this self-view might be imperfect, in most cases, it considers more aspects and information than is available to any other person.

While it is possible that individuals can tilt their answers toward an idealised view of themselves, the survey questions are framed in ways that minimise this and, in addition, the vast majority of respondents would consider it self-defeating to provide inaccurate information about themselves.

Follow-up whole brain questions to many hundreds of H.B.D.I. participants indicate an extraordinarily high agreement with their profile (over 90%).

Isn't all this brain stuff just a flash in the pan? Won't it just pass - another fad?

In early Egypt, valued organs of the deceased were preserved in canopic jars - the brain was discarded.

In 1989 the U.S. Congress and President Bush declared the 1990s as the Decade of the Brain.

It's taken 6,000 years to get to this point in our understanding and respect for the brain as the central organ of the body.

This idea, like many other things of great value, has taken a long time to achieve general acceptance.

Considering the rapid increase in worldwide attention being given to Ned's concepts, we expect this technology to be a major plateau for understanding the nature of humans.

The short answer to these whole brain questions is, NO. There is essentially no relationship between Whole Brain Technology and these three approaches.

Astrology is a very complicated construct based on ancient myth and anecdotal data. Even after its existence for well over 3,000 years it remains highly speculative and scientifically invalidated.

One of the reasons that the birth date question is included in the research questions portion of the survey form is to attempt to discover the degree to which there are brain dominance correlations with astrological signs.

Psychology is a highly developed science founded on a conceptual base entirely different from the physiological base upon which Ned's Technology is based.

Contemporary understanding of the brain renders phrenology as totally without meaning. Even though phrenology flourished for over 50 years in the 1880s, there is absolutely no scientific validation of this pseudo-science.

A positive contribution to present day understanding that comes out of this now-discarded approach is the notion of brain specialisation in many different categories.

Whole Brain Technology is, of course, based on the specialised brain with specialised modes being allocated to the four quadrants of The Whole Brain Model.

The upper left A quadrant typifies cerebral processing and therefore the colour to represent this quadrant is cerulean blue.

The lower left B quadrant, being structured and organised, was designated as green because green suggested groundedness.

The lower right C quadrant because of its emotional, feeling and interpersonal orientation was assigned red because of the emotional passion implied by that colour.

The upper right D quadrant because of its imaginative qualities was assigned yellow because of that colour's vibrancy.

Although new applications are constantly being reported, in answer to these whole brain questions, the most common uses are:

PERSONAL GROWTH - including education and career guidance; personal creativity; enabling choices; understanding of self & others

CREATIVITY - including unleashing creative potential of individuals and groups; Whole Brain creative processes

TEACHING & LEARNING - including Whole Brain design and delivery; using different thinking preferences to group learners; training the trainers

MANAGEMENT - including LEADERSHIP; dealing with diversity; valuing differences; handling change; building an empowering culture

SELECTION - including matching thinking preferences to job requirements; choosing project team members

FEEDBACK including 1-to-1 exchanges; 360-degree appraisals; team and inter-team feedback

There are many whole brain questions and Ned Herrmann questions. The ones above are most commonly asked. Hopefully, the answers to these whole brain questions will be of value to you.

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Whole brain questions and their answers.