Creative right and logical left hemisphere?

The brain can be divided into two halves: the right and left hemispheres.

The visual center in the right side of the brain takes care of visual impressions from the left eye, and the left side takes care of the right eye, and thus the different functions are duplicated in both hemispheres of the brain - with certain variations. The right and left hemispheres of the brain are connected by a structure called the corpus callosum, which ensures that the two halves "talk together".

There are also differences between the two hemispheres of the brain, but not as a popular myth claims:

You've probably heard that the right half is creative and the left half is logical?

It may even be that you have retold it to others? Unfortunately, I have done so myself - believing that it was true. A Google search for: 'brain right creative left logic half' gives approx. 10,200 results, so there is some indication that there are many who believe in the theory.

(In English, the theory is called brain hemispheric lateralization and a Google search for 'hemispheric brain lateralization myth' yields 52,900 results.)

The theory claims that the centers that control our “mathematical sense” are found in the left hemisphere of the brain, and that what controls creativity and intuition is found in the right hemisphere. The theory also claims that the left hemisphere uses logic and is detail-oriented and the right hemisphere is emotional and holistic. And so one could go on with a long list of things that are claimed to be found in either one or the other hemisphere of the brain. It is also claimed that people have a dominant hemisphere of the brain, and that a person’s strengths and mannerisms will be largely influenced by brain dominance.

Here you can see a diagram of the alleged division. (Source: https://www.dysleksi-i-fokus.dk/index.php/hvad-er-ordblindhed-og-dysleksi/hjernens-funktion .)

The basis for the theory probably arose in the mid-1800s, when two neurologists, Broca and Wernicke, discovered that patients who had difficulty communicating had damage to an area called the left temporal lobe. So they proposed that language was controlled by the left side of the brain. This is equivalent to concluding that a soccer forward is solely responsible for all the goals scored in a soccer game , and that all the other players have no influence on how many goals are scored. It is true that the left temporal lobe helps control language, but we now know that most functions in the brain occur in an interaction between many areas of the brain, and that their idea was too simple.

Unfortunately, their idea was well received by the author (not the scientist!) Robert Louis Stevenson, who took it a - long - step further and introduced the idea of a logical left brain competing with an emotional right brain, represented by his characters Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

It must be said that this is something of a scientific overinterpretation.

In the 1960s, researcher Roger Sperry studied split-brain patients. These were epilepsy patients who had had the connections between the two hemispheres of the brain, the corpus callosum, severed. Sperry found that different tasks were solved in different halves of the brain. Among other things, he found that the left side of the brain takes care of analytical and verbal tasks, and the right side takes care of spatial perception and contributes emotional context to language. There is some way to go before concluding that the same is true in healthy, intact brains.

It IS true that there is a difference between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. But the creative-right/logical-left hemisphere theory is far too simplified: most processes in the brain occur in an interaction between many other areas of the brain.

There is also no research that suggests that we have a preference for using either one half of the brain or the other – quite the opposite. There is actually research that suggests that there is a correlation between how many connections we have between different areas of the brain - for example between the right and left hemispheres - and how creative we are. Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201702/highly-creative-people-have-well-connected-brain-hemispheres )

It is actually also worth questioning whether a distinction between emotions and logic is correct. On the surface, this distinction is well-known and sounds very sensible, but modern neuroscience shows that we actually use our emotions to make what we call "rational" decisions.

In my opinion, the theory of a creative right half and logical left half is pseudoscience that has no practical application.

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Do you want to? learn more about the brain and myths?

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