left brain right brain myth

[SearchingforPeace]

The left half - right half divide in human brains is a myth, scientist says | Science | News | The Independent

He said: “It is certainly the case that some people have more methodological, logical cognitive styles, and others more uninhibited, spontaneous styles. [However] this has nothing to do on any level with the different functions of the [brain’s] left and right hemispheres.

“The pop culture idea (creative vs. logical traits) has no support in the neuroscience community and flies in the face of decades of research about brain organisation, the functional roles of the two brain hemispheres and evidence from patients with lesions in one or the other hemisphere in the brain.”

 

[fetus]

Absolutely. Yet, embarrassingly enough, it's still being taught in psych classrooms. We had quizzes and tests on it, even.

 

[Coriolis]

OK - so what about those studies on people in whom the connections between the two sides of the brain have been damaged or destroyed, whether through injury or surgery? The two sides were shown to perform quite different functions, the nature of which gave rise to the left vs right distinctions described in the OP.

 

[Cellmold]

So this is just about the breakdown into logical/creative?

Obviously that framing isn't going to be accurate for something as intricate as the brain.

 

[Kheledon]

Interesting. Thanks for the link.

Not to derail the thread, but I wanted to add that I had recently read an article suggesting that there are more neurons in the cerebellum than in the entire cerebral cortex (despite the fact that the cerebellum is less than 1/3 the size of the cerebral cortex). Neuroscientists remain unsure about what, exactly, the cerebellum does (besides motor control), but it's likely that it does a lot more than we currently think. We're just not sure what it does.