PsychMyths and Psychology Applied To Everyday Life

Left Brain, Right Brain - Why everything you believe about the two "parts of the brain" is wrong.

Of all the myths people hold about how people behave (Psychology), the left brain, right brain "idea" is probably the most common. No doubt you've heard of thinking with the left brain, or thinking with the right brain, having been exhorted to use one or the other, for most of your life.

Unfortunately, this false distinction and the contention that different parts of the brains are so super-specialized is over-simplified and misleading.

It IS true there is some hemispheric specialization and that certain kinds of thinking are associated with the two different sides of the brain. Function are somewhat "assigned" to different brain sections, but we now know that the "assignments" are not fixed, and can be modified through experience, learning and training.

The term used to describe brain flexibility is called neuroplasticity and it reflects our newer understanding that brain structure AND function change with experience. For example, stroke victims often can "relocate" specfic functions to different parts of the brain than were originally assigned the tasks originally. That's why stroke victims can regain abilities, like speech, reading, and memory that existed in parts of the brain that no longer work correctly.

Apart from neuroplasticity, there is a much bigger misunderstanding of the brain that gives rise to our tendency to see it as a collection of individual parts.

Brain as Complex System. Brain As Mechanical Machine

Brains are systems. That is the sum of the brain parts is MUCH greater than the simple addition of the functions of the parts. A system is usually something that has strong inter-relationships among the parts, such that part A can affect part B, while part B is also affecting part A. Multiply that by hundreds of brain sub-sections, and you can see why even the best scientists don't fully understand how the brain works.

If part A affects part B and part B is affected by what part A does, and part C affects both and is affected by both, the interactions, even if we had just three brain "parts" the possible set of interactions becomes huge, and outcomes become unpredictable unless we know exactly the relationships of each part, or in terms of the brain, each neuron, synapse and brain transmitter. Not only that but it becomes nonsensical to say "part A does this" and "part B does this" because neither part can do it's job without the other.

To keep it simple, consider this. There have been situations where individuals have had the connecting links between the two hemispheres severed. The connecting element is called the corpus collosum. On occasion the victims of accidents have had the connecting portion rendered inoperative, and in other situations, it has been deliberately cut to try to address severe symptoms of other diseases, most notably epilepsy.

In any event, these people have been studied, even, filmed on various tasks to see what happens. Literally, one ends up with a situation where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. The person is rendered impaired with respect to all kinds of function, even though the left brain and the right brain are left completely intact.

The example illustrates that the brain doesn't work in pieces. It can only be meaningfully considered as a whole system. If all you do is interfere with the brain's ability for the parts to communicate, and have every actual sub-part intact, you get a severely limited brain, and a person similarly limited. The parts are all there. But the SYSTEM cannot function because the inter-relationships among the parts are broken.

Why Do We Hold With This Misconception

Apart from the cognitive quirks that we use that are tied into information load processing, our beliefs about how the brain work are conditioned by many years of hearing the same things repeated over and over again and an outdated idea of the brain as a machine, much like an automobile, that has a part for mixing fuel and air, a part for warming up the car and so on. In the car, if you have a problem, you identify the faulty part, and since it's a relatively simple machine compared to a brain, you can fix the problem by replacing the part.

Brain systems are not mechanical machines. They are dynamic organs full of complex interactions, such that if one part is damaged, it doesn't mean a function is lost forever as would be the case in a broken automobile when a part breaks.

Unfortunately, we've had a mechanistic idea about the brain far longer than we've understood how dynamic and flexible the brain system is, and that notion is so embedded in our cultures that we no longer even know of the assumptions we use.

Implications

The left brain, right brain distinction, while inaccurate and misleading, may not actually be harmful in everyday life, PROVIDED we understand that it is not an accurate reflection of the brain. It is simply a metaphor to help us cope with some very complex issues. A creative and useful fiction perhaps, but one that, if taken literally can become confusing. Let's look at an example.

It's often suggested that to be creative involves using "right brain thinking". Except there's really no such thing. It, too is a metaphor. In fact creativity is a function of the WHOLE brain, left, right, cortex, amydala and all the other parts.

If ANY part is damaged so will the ability to "create".

But it gets even crazier when you ponder creativity. To produce a "creative" output, let's say a novel, or even a visual representation (painting, sculpture) requires the WHOLE brain. It requires the ability to think in pictures, or spatial relations, and all the other things you might associate with the right brain, but it also requires analytic (supposed left brain) thinking to produce the actual output. It involves the use of symbols, words and thoughts.

When you create (and everybody does to some extent), you draw from BOTH sides. The writer may be using "right brain thinking" to visualize a scene, for example, but the word choices he uses are from the "supposed left brain". Even the painter uses logical thought together with the more creative kinds of thinking, in order to produce a painting. How much ochre should be there? Is this shade too bright? Should that shadow be brighter?

In fact it's probably fair to say that no creative act of music, drama, writing, sculpture or problem solving can ever produce results using "one side of the brain" even if that was possible to do.

It's all bunk. To some degree it's not harmful bunk, as is the case with other Psychology myths. But it's bunk none the less.

And What About Mental Health Professionals? Trainers?

Belief in the left brain/right brain distinction, that is if the belief is held literally and as scientific truth, can tell you the degree of competence and expertise people have in their fields. If a therapist uses the distinction, and means it in a literal sense, he or she simply lacks enough understanding of brain function to realize it's wrong. There's lots out there who could be perfectly good therapists, at least up to a point, without understanding how brains work though.

Still it might be troubling. It would trouble me.

Likewise with trainers and group leaders. When I look at the competence and expertness of trainers and group leaders, I look for one critical element: Whether the person knows what he or she does not know.

There is nothing wrong with not knowing something. There IS something wrong if, as a teacher of others, one is teaching things that are wrong because one is ignorant of the topic.

Not knowing means not doing the proper self-education regarding the material one presents, and that REALLY worries me, because a trainer who is presenting false information about how people learn, is likely also doing things and presenting other information that is wrong, ineffective and inappropriate.

The repeating of any psychological myths on the part of professionals who should know better, and should know their limitations, is a good indicator of whether one should hire the person.

Of course, this would be extremely controversial in the training and helping industries, where trainers almost always lack enough training and education to have even a remote clue about how brains work. In fact often they know no more than the people the serve.

Be that as it may, it is what it is, but in other articles, particularly in the areas on learning styles and personality styles, you will see that this ignorance is far from harmless.

(back to main index page for PsychMyths)