From: Hiroki Kawada <kawada <at> MERL <dot> HITACHI <dot> CO <dot> JP>
Date: 14 dec 1995
Subject: Habu's brain

Reijer wrote:
>P.S.: I almost literally bumped into Hiroki Kawada last Sunday, when he
>stepped out of a shop here in Tsukuba. He explained to me why
>there is so much interest in the functioning of Habu's brain. It seems that
>he is the only professional who mainly uses the right part of his brain
>when playing a game. All other professionals mainly use the left side of
>the brain (if I remember correctly, it could also be vice versa). It would
>support my rather unscientific assumption that the difference between Habu
>and the others is that Habu is psychic :-). I have not been able to find any
>other feature in his Shogi that makes him such special player.
>In any case, food for thought for neuroscientists and psychologists...


A foreigner on bicycle was passing by me on the street in Tsukuba.  What a
surprise!  He was Reijer.
What a magical coincedence...

I read an article in NHK shogi magazine, about how Habu and other
professional players use their brain during shogi.
Electric wave coming out from several professional players' brain was
investigated when they were thinking shogi.  It was found Habu uses mainly
right part of his brain, though the other players, including Tanigawa, use
right and left alternately.  Right part handles feelings (inspiration), and
left part handles logics (calculations).  So Habu does not calculate during
shogi.  And his wave is similar to the waves coming out from brains of
Zen-monks on meditation.  It does not seem he is mentally concentrated
during shogi, though Tanigawa's wave shows very well concentration.  The
article says Habu may have huge number of positions appeared in his mind,
and he may think shogi by seeing those positions coming out from his
memory.
If I could think Tsume shogi by meditation, it becomes easy a little bit.

Hiroki
Hiroki Kawada                     * "After the defeat
Mechanical Engineering Res. Lab., *   it is a valuable time."
Sec. 15, Hitachi, Ltd.,           * K. Yonenaga,
Kandatsu 502, Tsuchiura,          *  Shogi (Japanese chess) player
Ibaraki  300 Japan