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The science behind PRISM

Brain building It is important to stress that PRISM Brain Mapping and traditional psychometric instruments stem from two different sciences and direct comparison is akin to comparing apples and oranges; they have some factors in common, but also fundamental differences.

Unlike many psychometric instruments, PRISM is not based on a theory developed by any one person. It represents a simple, yet comprehensive, synthesis of research by some of the world’s leading neuroscientists into how the human brain works, and why people, who have similar backgrounds, intelligence, experience, skills, and knowledge, behave in very different ways. The instrument’s graphical representation of the human brain serves, not only to remind people of its biological basis, but also to help demonstrate the equally valuable merits of specific cerebral modes. The role of neuroscience - and PRISM - is to explain behaviour in terms of the activities of the brain. How the brain marshals its billions of individual nerve cells to produce behaviour, and how these cells are influenced by the environment.

At the root of the PRISM Brain Mapping instrument is the basic fact that all behaviour is brain-driven. Each person has his or her own way of looking at the world (perception) and responding to it (behaviour). Those recurring responses - part inherited and part learned - fall into patterns, referred to as behaviour preferences. Each person exhibits his or her own personal behaviour preferences to a great extent by how and what they say and do. Much like a successful company, the brain relies on the input of its various parts prior to making a decision. That is, the brain acts as a set of collaborating brain regions that operate as a large-scale network.

To learn more about the brain click here >>

To view the brain’s key structures click here >>

In order to understand our behaviour it is necessary to consider the make-up of the brain. For decades psychologists maintained that once the brain’s physical connections were completed during childhood, the brain had become hardwired and remained like that for life. Now, thanks to the latest imaging technologies, the concept of ‘neuroplasticity’ (the brain’s ability to change), and brilliant clinical research, we see that this is, in fact, not the case and that human development is a continuous, unending process.

The key to individuality, however, is not to be found in the overall organisation of the brain, but rather in the fine tuning of the underlying networks. In particular, it is about the balance between our natural, instinctive reactions and our considered responses to everyday situations.

PRISM looks at the structure and function of the brain, and especially at the differences between the brain’s hemispheres, not only in terms of attention and flexibility, but in attitudes to the world. It is a well-established fact that there are obvious, undisputed differences in the shape, size, neuronal architecture, neurochemistry and neuropsychology of the brain’s two hemispheres. It seems obvious to ask: what does all that mean? The difference lies not in what they do, but how they do it.

Graphic showing the parts of a brain

The reason we human beings have two hemispheres is that we need two views of the world. Without the right hemisphere, we would be socially and emotionally insensitive, and have an impaired understanding of beauty, art etc. Effectively autistic, we have no sense of the broader context of experience. Meanwhile, without the left hemisphere, we would struggle to bring detail into focus.

That the two hemispheres interpret and create the world differently, with different modes of attention, different priorities and different values emerged in the 1960s and ’70s. Over time, scientists discovered that each so-called ‘function’ was carried out in both hemispheres, not one. For example, it is pointless searching for one brain area that does mathematics. There are different aspects of maths, for example, quantity and number. There are two types of number we can read - number words (‘seven’) and numerals or digits (‘7').

The processes required to perform exact calculations reside in the left hemisphere, in the parietal lobe. A different region of the brain, in the right hemisphere, underlies approximation of number. People generally show high correlations between mathematical ability and spatial ability in aptitude tests. In other words, people who have very good spatial ability - who have a good sense of direction - often, but not always, have good mathematical skills as well.

Also, the right hemisphere is unable to identify written numerals such as ‘12 - 6'. The right hemisphere knows that 6 is less than 8, but this knowledge completely disintegrates for the word ‘six’. Neither can the right hemisphere alone name digits and perform arithmetic.

The Brain hemisphere shown in four different colours The left hemisphere can add up numbers 2 plus 2, but the brain finds this impossible if the sum is shown solely to the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere can do multiplication whereas the right hemisphere cannot. The right hemisphere approximates while the left hemisphere calculates.

Similarly, although language resides in the left hemisphere in most people for people who are right-handed, it is not usually the case for left-handers - language is normally housed in both hemispheres in these people.

Fundamentally, PRISM is about our attention to the world; how we see and respond to our environment, including the people in it. More accurately, it is about our perception, or representation, of our environment. Our attention can either be broad or narrow.

The right hemisphere is responsible for broad attention, the left hemisphere for narrowly focused attention. Although the brain is split into hemispheres, it is a single, integrated, highly dynamic system. Events anywhere in the brain are connected to, and potentially have consequences for, other brain areas. As you read the words on this page, you are using thousands of the 100 billion nerve cells that make up your brain. The electrical firings and chemical messages running between these cells, called neurons, are what produce our thoughts, feelings and interactions with the world around us.

The PRISM Model is a metaphor for how the brain’s functional architecture and neural networks interact with brain chemicals such as glutamate, dopamine, noradrenaline, serotonin, testosterone and oestrogen to create behaviour. Modern neuroscience rests on the assumption that our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and behaviours emerge from electrical and chemical communication between brain cells.

On a broad level, the brain lends itself to partitioning, based largely on its anatomy. All proposed divisions within the brain are, however, highly artificial and are created in response to the human need to separate things into neat, easily understandable units. We must always bear in mind, however, that the brain functions as a whole and, with that caveat in mind, the PRISM quadrant model provides us with a useful schema that we can refer to when we are visualising how our brains are organised. It is, therefore, based on scientific principles and facts which have been simplified into a workable model to facilitate understanding.

PRISM is intended to be a sort of beginner’s guide to neuroscience. The neuroscientific language about the brain is extremely complex. PRISM attempts, therefore, to simplify that language so that it can be more easily understood. As a result, it contains many simplifications. For example, when we say; the left hemisphere is responsible for this, or the right hemisphere is responsible for that, it must be understood that in any one human brain at any one time both hemispheres will be actively involved. No single part of the brain does solely one thing and no part of the brain acts alone. All our thoughts, emotions and actions are the results of many parts of the brain acting together. When reading this section, it is important to bear in mind that the brain functions as the result of the dynamic interaction between many different systems, at different levels of organization, each operating according to its own rules.

The adult brain weighs about 3 pounds (1.4 kg) and contains about one trillion brain cells, 100 billion of them neurons. This is a gigantic number of cells. Neurons have both short and long fibres that contact the bodies of other neurons, and there are about one million billion connections between cells in the brain.

100 billion cells is such a large number, it is hard to imagine. One million is 1,000 times 1,000, the population of a very large town, for example. One billion is 1,000 times one million. The number of connections in the human brain is much bigger than the whole earth's population, which is about 7 billion.

Most of who we are is the result of the interaction of our genes and our experiences. In some situations the genes are more important, while in others the environment is more crucial. Genes set boundaries for human behaviour, but within these boundaries there is immense room for variation.

The brain is split down the middle from front to back into two blocks known as hemispheres. The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body.

While it is true that one hemisphere dominates over the other in terms of our experience of the world and our actions, both sides of the brain work together in almost all situations, tasks and processes. In other words, people are not right or left brained, they use both sides of the brain.

The two hemispheres are linked by a ‘bridge’, known as the corpus callosum has an 'excitatory' function i.e. it enables the two hemispheres to communicate with each other. However, the main purpose of a large number of these connections is actually to inhibit - in other words to stop the other hemisphere interfering inappropriately. The corpus callosum’s excitatory and inhibitory roles are, therefore, both necessary for normal human functioning.

Each hemisphere can be divided into four individuals chunks, known as lobes. The lobes are called frontal (front), temporal (side), parietal (top), and occipital (back). The right hemisphere (Green and Blue on the PRISM model) is predominantly associated with empathy and novelty. The left hemisphere (Gold and Red on the PRISM model) is predominantly associated with systemizing and routine.

‘Empathizing’ is the drive to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts, and to respond to them with appropriate emotion. For example, the right hemisphere helps us pick up on nonverbal cues in speech and gesture as well as in facial expressions. ‘Systemizing’ is the drive to analyse, explore and construct a system. Systemizing intuitively figures out how things work, or extracts the underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system.

The right hemisphere is interested in others as individuals. Self-awareness, empathy and identification with others are largely dependent upon the right hemisphere. On the other hand, the left hemisphere is not impressed by empathy. Its concern is with maximising gain for itself and its driving value is practical usefulness.

The left hemisphere is competitive and its concern, its prime motivation, is power. The right hemisphere is particularly well equipped to deal with passions, sense of humour, metaphoric and symbolic understanding, and all imaginative and intuitive processes.

While a lot of attention has been focused in the press on the interaction between the right and left hemispheres, it is also important to focus on the interaction between the front and the back of the brain. The back of the brain (Red and Blue on the PRISM model) is the sensory or input half, which receives input from the outside world and sorts, processes, and stores all of our sensory representations. This area is, however, not simply a site for processing sensory information. It is also the region of cortex for associative processes, where information from the various senses is bound together for higher order processing.

To view the brain’s key structures click here >>

The Brains Structure

In the front of the brain, the cortex is devoted to the processing of motor programs or output; we use this area to react to the input data from our senses. It is here we plan, create strategies, and create our responses to the world, and it is this area that has been adapted for use in abstract thinking and planning. The frontal lobes perform the most advanced and complex functions in all of the brain, the so-called executive functions.

They are linked to intentionality, purposefulness, and complex decision making. Motivation, drive, foresight, and clear vision of one's goals are central to success in any walk of life. The frontal lobes play a critical role in dealing with novelty. A novel task activates predominantly the right prefrontal cortex. As the task becomes familiar, the overall level of activation drops and shifts from the right to the left prefrontal regions.

Underneath the cortex lies the limbic system which is involved in the generation of emotions. The limbic system is made up of several pieces including the hippocampus (memory), the amygdala (emotion, including fear) and the hypothalamus (the body’s thermostat), Also, in moments of emergency the limbic system commandeers the rest of the brain to protect us from harm.

Other items, such as the anterior cingulate gyrus, directs our inner response to others and keeps us willing and interested in being with them. The orbitofrontal cortex is the error catcher and with its partners, the anterior cingulate and the ventromedial cortex of the frontal lobe, is crucial for empathy and evaluation of the genuineness of the words and intentions and comments of others.

The human brain remains the most complex item in the known universe. It has been described as follows by Professor Robert Ornstein:

“The brain regulates all bodily functions; it controls our most primitive behaviour; eating, sleeping, keeping warm; it is responsible for our most sophisticated activities; the creation of civilisation, of music, art and language. Our hopes, thoughts, emotions and personality are all lodged somewhere in there. After thousands of scientists have studied it for centuries, the only word to describe it remains: “amazing”.

The discoveries of neuroscience have shifted the paradigm of how the brain works and, as a result, they are challenging our beliefs about human behaviour and potential. When it comes to business, the effect is nothing short of revolutionary. This isn’t just about making use of a new management technique, model or practice. The latest research goes right to the way we think about human behaviour, highlighting fundamental flaws in our current approaches and providing new insights that challenge everything we take for granted about ourselves and others.

Although the PRISM Model is based on the published works of a wide range of experts within the neuroscience community, this should not be taken to mean that any of those individuals necessarily advocates or supports the content of the instrument.