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Turns out that no one is naturally "right-brained" or "left-brained" despite what you may have heard. Though many people believe this idea, it's not how our brains work! Both Psychological Science and Neuroscience point to the fact that all our behaviors arise from the coordinated flow of energy across both sides of our brains. The musician who's also a whiz at math? The artist who is also a keen business owner? All this happens from the integration of neural signals, not the isolation of them.
Exhibit A
Exhibit A
We conducted a survey using 25 participants, in the survey the questions gave participants the opportunity to separate the myth from facts. The data gathered showed that for each question over half the participants answered in favor of the myth and only 12% acknowledged that it was a myth that people are either right or left-brained.
Instead of believing that our minds are limited to these false constructs, we should push the belief that our brain is a complex system that utilizes all parts to complete a series of day-to-day tasks.
There are risks in isolating our brain functions based on personality. This oversimplification of the human mind and personality adds obstacles as people attempt to learn while also robbing them of job and learning opportunities.
Exhibit B
Exhibit B
In an Instagram poll 19 out of 35 people (54.29%) believed the myth, "people can be 'right brained' or 'left brained' in how you approach problems".
This myth stems from the idea that our dominant personality traits are related to the side of the brain that has more control.
Creative people are thought to be right hemisphere dominant while logical people are thought to be left.
It is true that localization in the brain occurs, as supported by Broca’s discovery and Hebb’s rule, but behavior is dynamic.
Meaning that complex actions such as drawing and/or solving algebraic expressions requires input from both hemispheres.
During all times of the day, both hemispheres have millions of neurons firing simultaneously. This is called the Default Mode Network (DMN).
Top down processing, one of the ways that we can encode the environment, occurs in both sides of the brain.
An environmental cue sends a signal through your retinas to your brain that then encodes it with symbols.
This interaction is what allows you to put a name (symbol) to what you are processing.
Exhibit C
Exhibit C
In our straw poll, we found that 68.65% believed the myth to be true, while only 31.36% believed it to be false.
Our brains work through phase sequencing and spreading activation which means that when you receive one stimulus, such as the word red, many different parts of your brain engage to form a thought or memory, such as fire truck.
Brain scans show activation throughout our entire brains
For example, with language, not only is our Wernicke's area activated but so is our frontal lobe and Broca's area (Goldstein, 2019)
Furthermore, different types of personalities, such as creative or logical, show similar activity patterns on both sides of the brain during brain scans regardless of one’s personality. (Shmerling, 2019).
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