You’ve probably also come across a few articles or books suggesting you can unleash the hidden creativity of right brain thinking or the deductive logic of left-brain thinking.
People described as left-brain thinkers are told that they have strong math and logic skills. Those who are described as right-brain thinkers, on the other hand, are told that their talents are more on the creative side of things. Given the popularity of the idea of “right-brained” and “left-brained” thinkers, it might surprise you learn that this idea is just one of many myths about the brain.
In psychology, the theory is based on the lateralization of brain function. The brain contains two hemispheres that each perform a number of roles. The two sides of the brain communicate with one another via the corpus callosum.
New findings
In a new two-year study published in the journal Plos One, University of Utah neuroscientists scanned the brains of more than 1,000 people, ages 7 to 29, while they were lying quietly or reading, measuring their functional lateralization – the specific mental processes taking place on each side of the brain. They broke the brain into 7,000 regions, and while they did uncover patterns for why a brain connection might be strongly left or right-lateralized, they found no evidence that the study participants had a stronger left or right-sided brain network.
Jeff Anderson, the study’s lead author and a professor of neuroradiology at the University of Utah says:
The neuroscience community has never accepted the idea of ‘left-dominant’ or ‘right-dominant’ personality types. Lesion studies don’t support it, and the truth is that it would be highly inefficient for one half of the brain to consistently be more active than the other.
But the brain isn’t as clear-cut as the myth makes it out to be. For example, the right hemisphere is involved in processing some aspects of language, such as intonation and emphasis.
How did it start?
How, then, did the left-brained/right-brained theory take root? Experts suggest the myth dates back to the 1800s, when scientists discovered that an injury to one side of the brain caused a loss of specific abilities. The concept gained ground in the 1960s based on Nobel-prize-winning “split-brain” work by neuropsychologists Robert Sperry, and Michael Gazzaniga.
The researchers conducted studies with patients who had undergone surgery to cut the corpus callosum – the band of neural fibers that connect the hemispheres – as a last-resort treatment for epilepsy. They discovered that when the two sides of the brain weren’t able to communicate with each other, they responded differently to stimuli, indicating that the hemispheres have different functions.