Connecting our Left & Right Brain for holistic presenting

Mikey: [00:00:00] Mollie, are you left brained or right brained? Welcome back to Presentation Thinking, a. k. a. the Storyteller Study Club. This is your co host, Mikey Meduski, founder, CEO of Coast Ranch Communications. We're a presentation design agency, and I'm joined by your favorite, my co host, Mollie Gagin, straight out of Inglewood, Colorado.

What's up?

Molly: Hello, Mikey. Good to be back. Hello, Presentation Thinking. To answer your question, I thought I was more right brained for most of my life. Why is that? Because, because Mikey, of this very common narrative, this story going [00:01:00] around that left brain houses, you know, all of the logical, analytical pieces and right brain houses more of like creative and imaginative qualities for people.

And little did I know, This is kind of a myth. And we're here today to talk about that.

Mikey: I think the, the idea of like neuroscience, creativity, you know, like Molly, also we hear anyone who writes about creativity, whether it's Rick Rubin or the art of war guy or the war of art, they all kind of go back and say, we were all inherently creative when we came out as children, you know, like everyone doodled, we had big imaginations.

And then as life goes on, maybe you do less and less of that stuff, right? Yeah, so maybe that is a case for maybe everyone can be creative and maybe it's all relative, right?

Music: Yeah,

Mikey: but there was this really interesting article that our research, you know study I should say

Music: Yeah

Mikey: that came out in [00:02:00] 2017 and I stumbled onto it doing some research for a presentation and

Molly: my he's in research mode You guys yeah, I'm in research

Mikey: mode So I'm a little scattered here But I was like I want to validate something and talk about this article out loud or this study You That's entitled creative people have better connected brains.

So this is a, an article about the study and we'll link to it. There's a couple of different ones online that you can find, but the, the subtitle here is highly creative people have significantly more nerve connections between the right and left hemispheres. So what we'll go into is a little bit of what this study was about, how they did it.

Maybe some of the implications too, but there's this one graphic that kind of blew my mind That I want to hopefully we can put it on our on the notes page

Molly: Who will share

Mikey: because it kind of does to me maybe dispel that myth that only right brain people quote are are creative

Molly: Yeah, I love it. And in this image, Mikey, you just said this to me kind of like casually this week, you know, we were thinking of something [00:03:00] fresh to talk about and it's interesting because if you've been on the ghostranch.

com blog recently, we had a blog post about this at the end of the summer called the whole brain approach to presentation excellence because we've always talked about how The best creatives, the best presenters, the best storytellers have a great balance of right brain and left brain, they really like combine these two things together.

And I wrote the blog post with very little, just a generalized perception of the neuroscience, which is still true, that like your left brain holds a lot of that logic and decision making and your right brain has more often those creative moments and imagination. That is still true. But what I didn't realize is that what is more important and to a creative person and to a more impactful maybe presentation or something is actually the connection and the connecting pathways between those two sides of the brain.

In the blog post we talked about some really creative and incredible people. That are incredible presenters that we've talked to on the podcast here in presentation thinking that you [00:04:00] wouldn't necessarily expect to be amazing presenters, not that they're not smart or anything like that, but it's like, okay, a surgeon, we talked to this, you know, amazing T.

J. Shade, who on an episode, 113, where he does like a lot of research presentation. It takes a lot of like how to communicate data in a compelling way. We talked to Michelle Syracuse, who's a voice coach in one episode, 130, who's like, talks about like delivery being super, super important. And she comes from like an acting and theater background.

So just really unexpected places in Liana patch, right? We love this one where she's a comedic copywriter. And not only is she very strategic and calculated with how she's writing, but she's funny doing it. She's super creative and imaginative and a great Instagram follow if you're looking for that. All right.

And so I just thought this was kind of topical for our Thinking and and synthesizing with presentation thinking excellence and like how to excel is like, let's get into the neuroscience of it, you know, so

Mikey: yeah, yeah, that's right.

Molly: Let's get into the study. What [00:05:00] went down?

Mikey: Durham, North Carolina. Molly, imagine.

Great place. You're there. Duke University. Heard of it. Smarty smart. Statisticians David Dunson of Duke and Daniel Durante of University of Padova, Italy analyzed a network of white matter connections among 68 separate brain regions in healthy college aged volunteers. So I don't know much about the brain.

Apparently the white matter lies under the outer gray matter. Yeah.

Molly: We've all got something called white matter. Sounds like a little gooey.

Mikey: Yeah, you, Maddie.

Molly: GUI connector.

Mikey: It is composed of bundles of wires, or axons, which connect billions of neurons, carry electrical signals between them, okay?

Molly: Whoa, axons, Mikey.

Mikey: Yeah, right? And, so we, we had the incredible fortune of having Dr. Carmen Simon on our pod a couple weeks ago. She's got a new book. Where she's been doing some of this like neuroscience studying. So like they'll strap, you know, a subject up and [00:06:00] measure, you know, EKG and EEG and all these like sort of stimuli activity that are going on in their heads because turns out happens a lot faster than if we were to do a sort of a post, you know, how did you think about, what'd you think about that slide?

So this real time brain monitoring stuff is kind of crazy. So what happens is they gathered a bunch of data using MRI technology. And then I guess kind of like mapped it and they wanted to measure someone's like, I guess, potential to be creative or a good problem solver. Like, how do you measure someone's ability or potential or likelihood of being like a divergent thinker, ability to come up with many answers to a question.

So they asked people to draw, like, for instance, as many geometric designs as they could in five minutes, right? Okay. And so, yeah, think about that, Molly. Like, it's, it reminds me of those bar games or those, like, kind of, uh, yeah, under pressured games where you have to come up with, you know, seven words about, you know, things that are read or whatever.

Yeah. Right. Kind of

Molly: a categories moment or [00:07:00] something. Yeah. Cool.

Mikey: They asked people to list out as many new uses, uh, as they could for everyday objects, like a brick or a paperclip. They also filled out a questionnaire about their achievements in 10 areas, including visual arts, music, creative writing, dancing, cooking, and science.

Cool. Thanks. And then they kind of gathered this like composite creativity score for each person. So there were no like major statistical differences in connectivity within hemispheres or between men and women. So it's not like men are more creative. Women are more creative. But for these edge case, like the outlier top 15 percent who scored the highest on the creativity tests.

Compared to the bottom 15%, there was significantly more connections between the right and the left hemispheres. And I think you have to see this visual, but like, imagine looking down on top of the brain, you see those two, the two sides, right. And toward the frontal lobe. So like the top of that, there's these like lines that are going between those kind of neurons, but they're [00:08:00] jumping the gap.

Which is not something that, you know, I think when we're thinking, Oh, it's all happening in the right brain, I'm in creative mode, but yeah, Molly, this is kind of where I think we need to zoom out and, and wonder like, What does this all mean, right?

Molly: Yeah, so what I'm hearing, Mikey, is one side and another side have a lot, the people that performed, quote unquote, more creatively on these little kind of various tests and things like that, be curious to see like people doing a bunch of different, bunch of different tests, right?

Like going to the art department and see how many pathways they have, going to the science department. See how many pathways they have at this college. There's more, there's a lot of like green lines going across like a little lattice or um, it almost looked like a crochet or knitting kind of thing where the yarn's like skipping back and forth from either side.

So the more pathways and connectors Between these two sides that someone has potentially the more creative they are. Is that kind of the maybe or

Mikey: like maybe they're just better problem solving or something, but you think about both. Yeah. Think about those, like, just like a player, [00:09:00] like those like kick ass people you knew from school who always just crushed it or got so far ahead in their careers.

Yeah. When we think of like. So on the left side, the strategic, analytical, logical, scientific, linear, sequential, I think we know a lot of people who, who crush it there. Right. But can they also come up with those ideas, have a holistic view from time to time? Like, like, can they, can they think emotionally?

So some of the EQ side of things, spatial, imaginative. So that's where I'm really thinking there's a few people in my life who come to mind who I'm like, Damn, they're so smart and they come up with like crazy good ideas or some CMOs We know who who've made that gap like their careers have taken off so fast and they are brilliant with the verbal You know, they can come up with killer messaging they're actually some of the best people when it comes to sketching out a napkin sketch and giving it to us like we need the diagram to look like this and very few people In my experience, can do both.[00:10:00]

Molly: Yeah, and they have the execution, too, of being like, this is how it would be. Like, you know, so many, I think so many people dismiss themselves, and we've definitely talked about this before on the cast. But this, in full transparency, this is the first time this week that I'm hearing that left brain and right brain is a little bit of a mess.

It's debunking, I feel like it exists, but it's not as like, you know, just hard, like, hardly separate, like, in separate, whatever, right? Sure. Yeah, I know what I mean. Anyway, left brain, right brain, isolated is like working separate from each other, isn't it? Your brain works together both times.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: And I think, yeah, like people so often dismiss themselves as like, I'm not a creative person, I don't have that, so you guys do this or something, especially when they're working with us, or I'm sure, you know, if you're, if you're tuning in as a designer, you've heard people say that to you, be like, oh, you can do it, like, you take it on, or maybe you're that person that says you're not creative, but I would I would argue that you just haven't, first of all, you [00:11:00] know, as children growing up, we're given so many creative options, and then those become fewer and fewer as we get older, so it's, you know, an individual onus to continue to give yourself those opportunities to go learn a new hobby, pick up a watercolor for fun, like, do it with your kid, whatever, but that's, like, that's important, and that will flex that muscle as silly as it seems.

Because it is a muscle and maybe there's an option to like open up some more connecting pathways

Music: in your

Molly: brain. That's a question I'd be curious as a neuroscientist, I'm like, is it possible to see someone without a ton of like those connecting pathways that was in the study that had maybe fewer than the people that had more.

I wonder if there's, like, any way to open up more, like, how do you get them to talk to each other more? What are some exercises you could do? I'd be very curious to see if there's something to, like, exercise that capacity in your brain.

Mikey: Can we mimic it? Like, that's where my head is going, is whether this is true or [00:12:00] not.

Like, I don't, we don't know, Molly, if this has been replicated, you know, peer reviewed, all that. We think, You know, everything changes. We just learned that from Malcolm Gladwell talking about revisiting, you know, chapter four of the tipping point, there's more data. So things naturally, this may not be definitive.

However, let's imagine there's some truth to it. Crossing the gap, left and right brain working together can produce more creativity. So in the work setting, this drives me insane. And it's why. Frankly, Ghost Ranch exists, but what we see is people who sort of live on that left hemisphere who are charged with strategy, analytics, think of like a subject matter expert who they're going to put on this industry webinar or something.

Right. They're going to, they know their stuff, right? They can, they can tell you exactly everything about their workplace and they can string together a pretty linear presentation or outline. But then they might dismiss [00:13:00] themselves. Like you said, like I'm not creative. We're going to, we're going to send this to quote unquote, like creative team or design.

Sure. And a lot of times that means sort of. Here's my deck, make it pretty, or chuck it over the fence, submit a ticket. Siloed

Molly: to the other silo.

Mikey: Totally. Or these like product high service things are all the rage now where you pay for, you know, the in house marketing ops team pays a subscription and you send a ticket and that person, they route it across the world.

And some, you know, some designers somewhere slaps it into brand, makes it look pretty. Boom. But that is a very much a handoff. And it's like an extreme handoff where to me, that's just one side does one thing and then the other

Molly: side

Mikey: does another completely separated, right? Like there's no, not much connectivity.

So I think the argument that we stand for is that there could be that greater creativity. [00:14:00] If there's more room to connect, if the presenter and the quote unquote creative, but the designer get a lot of revs together and they get to, to do that necessary fiddling and they get to just jam. And it does remind us of, you know, we, we talk about our presentation studios as studios, we named them after like music recording studios, because those are the ultimate epicenters of like, it's the venue.

To iterate right and riff and you had to be there in the moment That's where some of the magic players like yeah,

Molly: you know, you got the sound engineer You might have like a specific musician, of course who knows how to play specific instrument

Mikey: What would would the be what would the Beatles be if John was like?

Hey, here's the song. Yeah, Paul, go make it, man. Thanks. Yeah,

Molly: totally. Can't wait to hear

Mikey: it. Yeah, we can

Molly: go at some crazy pizzazz, you know. Yeah, who knows? I think that's so, yeah, it's so important to like the, the end product that everyone kind of is there along that whole journey of iteration. Yeah. I think too often in these, [00:15:00] Marketing and creative, where we try to infuse a lot of creativity into marketing and business storytelling, the things that get siloed, you can feel that in the end product, it's the really collaborative and cohesive ones that are working together across those capacities, even if it kind of puts you out of your comfort zone where you're like, maybe you're not the creative person sitting in, like what, helping the designer pull it together and you're like, does this feel right?

Like, I don't know. Like, what's the meaning of this? color here, the shape here. Does the font communicate, like, our story as a brand? You know, like, there's so much more opportunity if we allow ourselves to give, to, you know, push ourselves into the space we might not think we belong in, you know?

Mikey: I think so.

Molly: I feel like the myth of The right brain, left brain has been really successful to categorize people because I don't know, I'm just kind of thinking of this Mikey, but people love those identity quizzes where it's like, which cake are you in Great British Bake Off? Like, people love to identify themselves and know that if they are a left brain or right brain person and be like, hi, I'm Molly.

I'm an ENFP. I'm [00:16:00] Irish Briggs. I'm an ENFP. I'm a right brain person. In reality, like we have it all. We have it all.

Mikey: You could. And certainly we shouldn't limit ourselves to thinking we're only one thing. Right. And, and know that maybe we can, we can have it all if we, if we just give ourselves the room to kind of, to thrash and tap both sides a little bit, certainly.

Certain things, emotion, might live in one area, strategy in another, but yeah, it's a, it's kind of opened my eyes. I also saw this quote, Molly, the other day, Pablo Picasso, To know what you're going to draw, you have to begin drawing. And you think these creative people, right? Everyone thinks Pablo Picasso, one of the all time most creative people in the history of the world.

Admits that there is some process that has to go into it, right? And it's not like these quote unquote creative people just they know it already here I'm gonna go paint, you know, the Mona Lisa or whatever It's like there is [00:17:00] that necessary to get through an idea to make it what it really should be in the end and and there's a lot of I don't know.

There's a lot of process and exploration that has to go into it.

Molly: I'm hearing there's like a need for like marination. Consimmering. You gotta let something simmer sometimes or like work itself out. Give it the air to breathe. Like a good bottle of wine, you know?

Mikey: Yeah, yeah. I'm

Molly: all about the food metaphors

Mikey: right now.

Yeah. If the verbal is on the left side and the visual is on the right, sometimes the seeing a picture can help us, Oh, that's it. That's the breakthrough. That helps the copywriter tune the headline and vice versa. Like, Oh, I love that headline. Try this image, you know, and it's that collaborative spirit that makes truly some of the best creative, like advertising ever creative communications.

And so I think this is just a plea to let's entertain that maybe this, this data and this study carries some merit. And what would that mean to, [00:18:00] if we were to change how we work, how we produce presentations, right? Maybe we would avoid some of those really gnarly handoffs and embrace a lot more collaboration.

Molly: And I know you're in this kind of research mode, Mikey, for a talk that you're coming up with. And I will include some of these fun slides, but yeah, what's the, what's the like information retention on just verbal versus verbal plus visual?

Mikey: Oh yeah, yeah, okay. Type of presentations. Alright. Okay. So, yeah, I, cause I've always felt a little flaky because I'm a, you know, you know, background as a designer and I think qualitatively some of us, we just can look at something and we're like, well, that's clearly better because it looks better.

Right. But I've had a hard time with some of our prospects and accounts, customer, future customers, I should say, who like, they're really scientific. Right. And I think I've been struggling to find some, something to support a more data driven. Kind of approach to saying like maybe why visual storytelling actually matters.

And so [00:19:00] there's something called dual coding theory and there's a sort of a neuroscientist. I don't even know what that his title would be. I think it's like Alan Paivio who was around in the seventies and eighties and found that there are two systems. There's the, there's sort of like words and images, basically verbal, nonverbal, and our brains process them.

They can process them like concurrently and like dual coding theory suggests that when we see them together, verbal plus visual lasts a lot longer with us. So there's this. Picture superiority effect that basically says if we hear words or see words, you know, the information we retain might be like 10%, but when you put like a visual with that word, it would be 65%, you know, based on a study.

So when you put words and images together in meaningful ways, they can be like six times more effective and memorable than [00:20:00] just spitting out words. And I think that's part of what you're getting at, Molly, is like a lot of times that's why PowerPoint gets a bad rap. We throw it together. It's technically accurate information, but there was no greater like narrative weaving, storytelling, visual storytelling, and they fall flat.

And that's why they are forgotten.

Molly: Okay, yeah. So to just repeat how incredible that stat is, 65 percent of verbal and visual communications, over 10 percent of the verbal, just verbal, just words on the slide. are retained, so that's a six times improvement when you have visuals and words together. And it's just like, it kind of seems like a duh thing, but you know yourself, if you're making PowerPoints in and out of work all the time, it's so easy to just info dump and get words in there.

And it's really so much more impactful, internal and external decks. To let it breathe, let it like connect with both sides of the brain. You need both. You need both visuals [00:21:00] and

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: Words. It's crazy. It comes back to children's books for me,

Mikey: Mikey. I always feel like. It comes back to children's books and cave paintings.

Yeah.

Molly: And cave paintings. Yeah, totally. We've talked about both of those.

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: Now this study was from 2017 and it's interesting like we were Kind of looking into this, Mikey, we were like, I wonder if there's been something more recent even to further corroborate it or expand it. Right, right. So I did a quick Google, and I just want to share this quote from a guy named science writer Carl Zimmer, who wrote for Discover more recently.

And it's just interesting because like, yeah, I'm like, I don't, I'm not following neuroscience constantly, but, you know, we both don't really know that this is technically a myth in the neuroscience world. So that they're, the left brain and right brain are so separated. So he says the pop psychology notion.

Of a left brain and a right brain doesn't capture their intimate working relationship. The left hemisphere specializes in picking out the sounds that form words and working out the syntax of a phrase, for example. But it doesn't have a monopoly on language processing. The right hemisphere is more sensitive to the [00:22:00] emotional features of language.

Weak delivery or something. Tuning into the slow rhythms of speech that carry intonation and or stress. And then he continues like, Well, it's absolutely true that some brain functions occur in one or the other side of the brain. Language tends to be on the left, attention more on the right. But people don't tend to have a stronger left or right side of the brain.

It's determined by more by connection between the two. And I just thought that really corroborated our, our thesis here.

Mikey: I like that, Molly. And it reminds me of the idea of what to say, and then how to say it, right? And I think maybe that is a little bit left and then a little bit right, but ultimately, the closer you can get together and bring in those, Those ideas into tandem may, may be better, uh, from a results basis.

Molly: Totally. We're Osmosis Jones and the brain highway just cruising, cruising through. The more highways, the better that are connecting the two. So cool. Yeah.

Music: I know.

Molly: If you're listening and, uh, have some interesting neuroscience facts [00:23:00] or people to follow and share, we'd love to, uh, continue these conversations.

Music: Yeah. We

Molly: know neuroscience has been a part of presentation thinking, but. Well, it's a little intimidating for, I don't know how you feel about it, Mikey, but a little intimidating, but really cool to kind of get confirmed in the science world of like what we think about presentating, presentating.

Mikey: No, it's sweet.

Yeah, I think there's a lot more going on in this field for us to follow. So more here. We'll keep this beat. Maybe not as commonly as we do just, you know, talking about how pretty stuff is.

Music: Yeah, yeah. But.

Mikey: You're gonna get some science on here every once in a while. And Molly, this is your brain on Spice Cabinet.

So Molly, I don't know. I don't have much prepared. We're going to London soon. You and I, again, if you're listening and it's not too late, tell us. The best Indian food. We're going to Dishoom.

Molly: Dishoom, yeah. I've been there once.

Mikey: But if you got anything else, tell us. Molly, I've been, I went to [00:24:00] Dishoom, too, last year.

Yes, you did. After the gig, and it was dope.

Molly: I can't wait. I'm, like, it's gonna be, it's gonna be a highlight for me already. Alright. Like, dope. Well, it goes without saying, we're gonna link this amazing article, Creative People Have Better Connected Brains, from 2017. I'll link this cool article that I shared out, the quote from Carl Zimmer.

And of course, if you haven't read it already, look at a little blog post with the whole brain approach to presentation excellence. We're definitely going to continue down this thread. Um, just right brain, left brain being connected RBLB Mikey, if, you know, we got an expert to come on here and talk about right brain, left brain connectivity, and they had a topical walkout song, not knowing who it would be,

Mikey: any

Molly: thoughts?

Mikey: No, here's, here's what I would pick. Cause I'm a big Todd Snyder fan. S N I D E R. He has a song called All Right Guy.[00:25:00]

You know, all like right, right brained. That's a stretch, but Molly, I've always wanted a Todd Snyder song up in this.

Molly: Okay. Love it. This is the time. Yeah, he's creative, so maybe

Mikey: he's, really he's both left and right.

Molly: When there's no one to ask, we get to be creative, which is why I'm picking The Middle by Jimmy Eat World.

Just take some time, little

Music: girl, just take some time, little girl, You just

Mikey: bested me big time, that's good.

Molly: Just take some time, you're in the middle, you know? Just try your best, try everything you

Mikey: can. Yeah. Back, back, forth, forth. Yeah. Exactly. That's cool. Well, this was a snappy little one, and we hope you tuned along until the bitter end. If you or a friend is struggling, With a presentation or like if you think your organization just kind of sucks at storytelling.

It's okay Hey, we have an anonymous anonymous tip line. Anonymous

Molly: tip line. At

Mikey: ghostranch. com Slash contact [00:26:00] you can let us know we won't we won't tattle.

Molly: We're here to help.

Mikey: Yeah, we're here to help

Molly: Reach out and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter for more presentation thinking in your inbox.

Music: Yeah. You

Molly: can do that anywhere on the GoStrange site.

If a box doesn't pop up for you, you can scroll all the way to the bottom and there's

Mikey: a spot to drop your email address. Until then We love

Molly: you presentation thinkers.

Mikey: Yeah. Party on, Molly. And Keep on pitching.