If one searches for Jungian psychological theory and neuroscience, one will inevitably come across the four-brain neuro-psychology theory.
Essentially, what this theory says is that the cerebrum of brains primaril function in a four-lobed set-up, two in front and two at the back. Communication happens between the front-left and rear-left quadrants (et simile for the right side) and between the front-left and front-right quadrants (also similarly for the rear half). It is hypothesised that communication between the diagonally opposite lobes (e.g. front right to rear left) is less efficient/slower because the singals must first travel from the front right to the rear right or front left before travelling to the rear left lobe.
Each lobe also has a specialty (although I do forget exactly what each bit does... it will arise with studious application of Google and Wikipedia...) and humans, apparently, show differing capacities for each region. For example, one person may have a dominant front-right lobe. If this were the case, and if (as a completely arbitrary example) the front-right lobe controlled logical forethought and mathematical ability, that person would exhibit great strengths in those areas, but would be weakest in abilities associated with the rear-left lobe (e.g. empahthy and subconscious inhibitions, as an arbitrary example). Some people might have strengths in two areas (e.g. right side, rear), which are generally adjacent, whilst others may have strengths in three adjacent areas (with the dominant region usually being the central region). A few rare cases are those who have strengths in all four regions—these people (from psychological studies) tend to be good at organising large organisations but can be indicisive and find decision making hard. So, whilst some people have particular strengths in some areas, each combination of lobe strengths has its own good and poor points, none being 'better' than any other. This is an interesting idea which illustrates that people have different intelligences rather than inferior/superior intelligence, a case which I believe is much more realistic.
The punchline of this idea is that when people are forced into using their 'inferior' brain regions, they operate at a muchly reduced efficiency and actually can suffer some psychological harm. The hypothesised reason for this is that in the stronger lobes, signals can travel with less resistance than in the weaker lobes. This has the effect of making some lobes more efficient than others, resulting in the greater observed cognitive strength of those lobes.
Introversion and extroversion are not really related to this theory (although one of the lobe-strengths has similar effects). People are naturally aroused = awake) to different degrees, based on their brains and based on the time of day, amount of sleep, etc.. The main theory behind the intro- and extroversion is that introverted people are naturally very aroused and so take in information more easily. They thus attempt to find areas with less stimulus, so that they are not overwhelmed by too much stimulus. Extroverted people are less aroused and so seek out more stimulus to wake themselves up; thus they function well in loud environments because they are awake enough to efficiently perform their tasks. People naturally lie on a spectrum between these two, but you can become more 'extroverted' if you are tired, for example, and you require arousal.
I found this quite an interesting theory that does explain many of the psychologically observed phenomena. I was slightly skeptical about the 'brain resistance' idea, however: they way it was written, mostly, but also I'm not sure if this would be a feasible way to look at brain structure. What does everyone else think? Also, what does everyone think of intro/extroversion? This is still an active area of research, so interesting ideas are sure to keep coming.
Josh Harbort
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