No, You’re Not “Right-Brained”
Don’t be fooled by neuroscience’s biggest myth
As someone who researches how humans think and behave, I often come face-to-face with psychological myths. It’s scary how many people think we only use 10% of our brains or that psychologists can somehow read minds.
Believe me, I’d be way better at my job if I could.
Many of these beliefs are harmless. But sometimes, they reflect more important misconceptions about how our mind works. These mistruths can lead us to adopt counterproductive views of ourselves. Or worse yet, change our behaviour based on false premises.
And of all the beliefs that might make this happen, none is more common than the “split-brain” myth. It goes like this:
A human brain has two halves connected by a mass of neural pathways deep in the middle. These halves of the brain have opposing purposes. The left side is the brain’s logical centre, responsible for systematic thought and reasoning. By contrast, the right side is creative and forms the basis for art and other imaginative pursuits.
One of these halves of the brain is more dominant than the other. If you see yourself as a creative type, it’s because your right brain is leading the way. Or something like that.
This idea appears everywhere. Visual depictions of the creative left brain versus logical right brain come in all forms, from clipart to fine art. It crops up in top-selling books, expensive courses and otherwise reputable sources. I’ve even heard people who studied psychology at school mention it.
Unfortunately, the split-brain myth is false.
Yet like any misunderstanding, it is derived from a grain of truth. In this case, that truth is a history of fascinating research that gives us priceless insights into how our minds work.
A Brain of Two Halves
For centuries, researchers have seen that the left and right sides of the brain can be responsible for different cognitive functions. Scientists knew that language impairment could result from damage to the brain’s left hemisphere as early as the 1860s.
One hundred years later, a series of Nobel Prize-winning experiments studied patients who had the connection between the left and right sides of their brain severed. These individuals’ left hemispheres were mostly responsible for their language and speech production. By contrast, their right hemispheres were responsible for much of their visual processing.
It’s easy to see how these findings shaped the public’s view of how our brain works. The linguistic and analytical capacity of the left hemisphere seemed very separate from the visual and creative ability of the right. But what about the idea that one side of the brain is dominant?
In some tasks, one side of our brain can seem dominant. For example, when controlling our movements, the right side of our brain controls the left side of our body and vice versa. In the same way, each of our eyes sends visual information to the opposite side of the brain.
Most of us have clear preferences for one of these sides. If you’re right-handed, the part of your brain that controls hand movement in your left hemisphere is more adept than its counterpart on the right. Naively, this might be interpreted as “dominance”.
So given these differences between the left and right sides of the brain, why is the split-brain myth false?
A Whole Lot of Evidence
The distinction between left and right brain function is not as clear as these early results would have you think. While it’s true that each side of our brain can specialise in different tasks, these specialisms are affected by many factors.
Going back to language, here are a few results from more recent studies:
- Key language structures in the left side of the brain are no larger in volume than their counterparts on the right.
- Right-side damage to the brain has also been found to cause language impairments.
- People with stronger connections between either side of the brain rely less on the left side for language processing.
The list goes on. Simply put, if you’re good at verbal reasoning, it’s not because you’re blessed with a strong left brain.
It’s also untrue that creativity is a product of the right side of the brain. Newer brain imaging studies have shown that creative thought activates many regions on both sides.
In sum, there is no scientific evidence that people are either “left-brained” or “right-brained”. Sure, the left side of the brain has a key role in language processing. But the right side also helps out, and the extent to which it does so depends upon many complex factors. Creativity doesn’t only originate in the right side of the brain either.
The split-brain myth is untrue.
And that matters.
Despite research to the contrary, people still buy into the split-brain myth. They read books about it, and pay for expensive business courses that tell them their managerial style based on whether they’re “left or right-brained”.
And in doing so, they internalise all sorts of falsehoods. That you are either systematic or creative by nature, but not both. That you have an arbitrary biological cap on your logical or imaginative capacity. That, to make better art, all you have to do is “learn to shut your left brain up” or something comparably nutty.
In reality, you should not limit yourself on account of these things.
You can be a systematic thinker and have heaps of creativity at the same time. Many of the best scientists I know fall into this category, and it’s often the very reason that they excel.
Nor is your creative or logical ability set in stone by the dominant side of your brain. In truth, the human brain is anything but static and inflexible. If patients with severe left-side injuries can adapt to regain normal language, you can surely learn new skills and styles of thinking.
Although research has debunked the split-brain myth, it is still embedded in the public consciousness. The only way we can get past it is to collectively recognise it as incorrect.
So the next time you see some split-brain silliness in the wild, don’t fall for it. You and your brain deserve better than that.
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