(August 14, 2013) Chances are, you’ve heard the label of being
a “right-brained” or “left-brained” thinker. Logical, detail-oriented and
analytical? That’s left-brained behavior. Creative, thoughtful and subjective?
Your brain’s right side functions stronger —or so long-held assumptions
suggest.
But newly released research
findings from University of Utah neuroscientists assert that there is no
evidence within brain imaging that indicates some people are right-brained or
left-brained.
For years in popular culture, the
terms left-brained and right-brained have come to refer to personality types,
with an assumption that some people use the right side of their brain more,
while some use the left side more.
Following a two-year study,
University of Utah researchers have debunked that myth through identifying
specific networks in the left and right brain that process lateralized
functions.
Lateralization of brain function
means that there are certain mental processes that are mainly specialized to
one of the brain’s left or right hemispheres. During the course of the study,
researchers analyzed resting brain scans of 1,011 people between the ages of
seven and 29. In each person, they studied functional lateralization of the
brain measured for thousands of brain regions —finding no relationship that
individuals preferentially use their left -brain network or right- brain
network more often.