Left vs. Right Brain
...ouching and feeling actual objects (sensory input), trouble prioritizing, so often late, impulsive, unlikely to read instruction manual before trying, listen to how something is being said, talking with your hands and likely to think you're naturally creative, but need to apply yourself to develop your potential. So, in essence, people who are right brained tend to need more hands on activity rather than just visual. Although they can be very visual learners they need something up close and able to help them visualize what task to perform. Each side of the brain has its own unique and special abilities. The right side of the brain is much more intuitive, while the left side of the brain produces a more logical aspect. The hemisphere best suited to perform the processing, for the individual it is intended for, will process information; this allows an individual greater understanding and learning potential of the situation that first started the brain processing information. Much research has shown that most people have a dominant side of the brain. Although there are cases where individuals are split in the middle between the left and ride side, in most instances this does not occur. People who are predominately left sided tend to be more verbal, analytical, and problem solvers; where as people who are predominately right sided tend to be artsy, good with math, and are more visual in nature. The dominant side because for well known when a thought process begins to occur. People, then, begin to open up and express themselves through one side of the brain. Although each hemisphere has its own set of functions in information processing and thinking, research data supports the notion these functions are not exclusive to one hemisphere. There are also many myths that come along with the dominance factor. One is handedness, people believe that whatever hand you are dominant with is the side of the brain that you will be dominant with too. Another is intelligence, there is no evidence to support right-sided hemispheric dominance is superior to left side hemispheric dominance or vice versa. There is no correlation to intelligence. The next one is genetics, dominance is not heretics, it is definitely not in your genes. It is what makes you an individual, especially how your dominance takes shape. The final myth is that females tend to be more left hemispheric dominant and males tend to be more right hemispheric dominant. Your hemispheric dominance will not depend on your gender, it will reflect on you as an individual. Although a few percent of people have right brains that are language-dominant, about 93 percent of us use the left side. A few percent have "mixed dominances." Many people believe that there is no such thing as left side and right side brain dominance. They come do these conclusions through their own observations. Take visual and spatial relationships , the function most often assigned to the right-brain convolutions opposite those occupied by language in left brain. While there is indeed a specialized area used for recognizing whether a friend's face is happy or sad located just above the right ear, most visual-spatial functions are not exclusive to the right brain. So there was general satisfaction when, a couple of years ago, a simple brain scanner test appeared to reveal the true story about one of neurology's greatest puzzles: exactly what is the difference between the two sides of the human brain? The big picture revealed by that work is proving far less romantic than the logical-creative split, intriguingly complex and tough to prove. After thoroughly studied it was shown that one side of the brain thought and saw in wide-angle while the other zoomed in on the detail. It is said that the popular myth about the hemispheres grew largely from "split-brain" research in the 1960s, such as that which later won Roger Sperry of Caltech a Nobel prize . In a drastic treatment for epilepsy, surgeons had operated on a number of patients by cutting the corpus callosum--the thick bundle of nerve fibres that forms the main connection between the cerebral hemispheres. The surgery revealed what Sperry described as "two spheres of consciousness" locked in the one head, the left-hand side having speech and a rational, intellectual style, while the right was inarticulate, but blessed with special spatial abilities. A good example would be in a test in which split- brain patients had to match a series of household objects, the left brain would match by function while the right would match by appearance. So, when seeing a cake on a plate, the left brain would connect to a picture of a fork and spoon while the right brain would select a picture of a broad-brimmed hat. This evidence appeared to support the idea of a highly modular brain in which, for example, thinking in logical categories was a strictly left hemisphere function while mental imagery and spatial awareness were handled on the right. But, says Joseph Hellige, a psychologist at the University of Southern California, this picture changed dramatically as soon as brain-scanning experiments began to show that both sides of the brain played an active role in such processes. Rather, it seemed to be processing styles that disti...