Which Side of Your Brain Am I Talking To?

Why Men & Women Talk
Past Each Other!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

It has been established beyond a reasonable doubt that the two sides of the human brain perform different functions, ranging from speech, emotional reactions, sexual pleasure, fear, and analytical thinking to the appreciation of beauty. There is also growing evidence that one side of the brain is dominant in most people. This is of vital importance because left-brain oriented people think and behave differently from right-brain oriented people.

One noted authority on the function of the brain, Japan’s Dr. Tadanobu Tsunoda (author of The Japanese Brain and numerous other works), claims that the language one first learns as a child is the deciding factor in which side of the brain is dominant for the rest of the person’s life.Dr. Tsunoda has spent several decades studying the influence of languages on brain function, using electronic devices he developed to test thousands of people in his Tokyo laboratory—both Japanese and non-Japanese—with some amazing results. [I was one of his subjects.]

He found that people whose native tongue is Japanese (or Polynesian!) are primarily right-brain oriented, while all other people are primarily left-brain oriented. (It’s the preponderance of vowels in these two languages!)

It seems that right-brain oriented people are primarily motivated by their emotions and a holistic approach to life, while left-brain oriented people are programmed to be logical and practical-minded, and to take a short-term approach to things. I used Dr. Tsunoda’s theory as the basis for evaluating the differences between the mind-set and behavior of the right-brained oriented Japanese and the left-brain oriented rest of the world in a book entitled Which Side of Your Brain Am I Talking To?—The Advantages of Using Both Sides of Your Brain.

I believe that the right-brain orientation of the Japanese was one of the primary factors that made it possible for them to recover from the destruction of World War II and turn tiny Japan into the world’s second largest economy in less than thirty years.

All women in left-brain oriented cultures are forced to use right-brain thinking and behavior to survive in their male-dominated societies, and Japanese women, whose culture is primarily right-brain oriented, are forced to use left-brain thinking to cope with their male-dominated society—making them superior in many ways to the male side of the population...

The French and Italians and all Spanish and Portuguese speaking people are more right-brain oriented than Americans, Chinese, Germans, British and other people around the globe.

Many of the problems that plague Western countries are caused by too much left-brain thinking and not enough right-brain thinking, and in Which Side of Your Brain Am I Talking To? I pinpoint many areas where business managers and people in general could benefit greatly from learning how and when to use the right side of their brains.

The book attributes the “irrational behavior” of both men and women to which side of their brain they use at a particular time, and provides insights for coping with the built-in gender programming of the brain.
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Copyright © 2007 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente.
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WHICH SIDE OF YOUR BRAIN AM I TALKING TO?—The Advantages of Using Both Sides of Your Brain (and Why Women Must Use the Less Dominant Side of Their Brains in Order to Survive!), by Boyé Lafayette De Mente. Phoenix Books/Publishers. 6x9 trade paperback. 108 pages. $9.95. ISBN: 0914778-95-1. Distributors to the trade: Ingram Book Company; Baker & Taylor. Consumer distribution: Amazon.com, Borders, Barns and Noble, etc.
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A full list of De Mente's books on China, Japan, Korea and Mexico can be seen on his personal website: http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/.