SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, March 3, 2016 (Gephardt Daily) — A University of Utah scientist is challenging the commonly accepted belief that the left and right halves of the brain have very different skill sets and capabilities.
Jeffrey Anderson, a leading U of U scientist, has done research on more than a thousand brains to compare how the different sides operate. In a recent interview, Anderson told the BBC Trending that his “research has confirmed that the left-right, creative-logic dichotomy is simply a myth.”
Anderson went on to suggest “It is certainly the case that some people have more methodological, logical cognitive styles, and others more uninhibited, spontaneous styles.”
But, Anderson says, “This has nothing to do on any level with the different functions of the brain’s left and right hemispheres.”
In fact, Anderson has found no evidence in his extensive neuroscience research to support “The pop culture idea (creative vs. logical traits) of the brain’s halves.” Instead, he believes strongly that “it flies in the face of decades of research about brain organization, the functional roles of the two brain hemispheres and evidence from patients with lesions in one or the other hemisphere in the brain.”
Scientists like Anderson are not sure where the idea of the logical left brain and creative/emotional right brain originated.
Research confirming that brains have separate left and right halves was actually awarded the Nobel Prize back in 1981. But, it did not attach the logic/emotional values to each of the halves.
