OK, that whole left brain, right brain thing has pretty much no scientific support. However, I could’t resist taking a test to determine which of the stereotypes I fit:
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Brain Lateralization Test Results
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| Right Brain (64%) The right hemisphere is the visual, figurative, artistic, and intuitive side of the brain. Left Brain (30%) The left hemisphere is the logical, articulate, assertive, and practical side of the brain |
Are You Right or Left Brained?
personality tests by similarminds.com
Does this disqualify me from being a scientist?
Are you perhaps left-handed ?
“I suspect I should have been a musician.”
Hmm…have you read Stephon Alexander’s blog? He’s a physicist and a musician. He seems to have spent some time trying to decide between the two and physics seems to have won out.
> that whole left brain, right brain thing has pretty much no scientific support
I thought the split-brain experiments support this?
Nope. I’m a righty all the way 😉 Well except perhaps in politics. I suspect I should have been a musician.
surprise surprise – I am 40/60 – right/left. And, I may have had to lie to bring my right score up that high. : )
48-48.
That may be right for a theoretical physicist who plays Allman Brothers music in bars part time!
I’m refering to the “popular” left brain/right brain stuff (creativity on one side, analtyic on the other.) I think most evidence points to these “general” functions of the brain being spread across both sides of the brain. Certainly, however, the split brain experiments show that language and vision have a left/right split. But I thinking jumping from these results to “left brain types are analytic” and “right brain types are creative” has little or no scientific support.
How did this happen? It says I am 50% right brain and 52% left. I’m a lawyer and even I know these numbers don’t add up.
I think the left/right brain science actually has some foundation, but doesn’t describe well left-handed people (a lot of whom are actually ambidexterous). Also there’s a lot of biological variation.
… having said that, I took the test and question its accuracy on the grounds that the questions don’t actually test typical “left brain” vs “right brain” thinking. Such left vs. right questions are actually more similar to those you find on IQ tests where you have to engage different types of thinking to solve a particular problem… and “right brain” thinkers tend to excel at some areas; “left brain”ers excel at others.
And what I meant with the biological variation comment earlier is that in intro neurobiology texts, you might see a brain map of areas of specialization in the brain – such and such area in this hemisphere for speech, for example. And it has some basis, but it’s not hard and fast. Some people engage more areas for language than average, and across both hemispheres rather than predominately one. That makes deciding if they’re left or right-brained (on the basis of how the do on verbal questions) inaccurate.
What I can’t find any good study testing is whether people who are left-type and right-types actually use that side of their brain in any greater quality. Anyone ever seen such studies?
This test scores how you solve problems in determining your left/right brain tendencies vs. just looking at how you view your environment –
http://web.tickle.com/tests/brain/index.jsp
Under this type of analysis I am classified as right vs. left brained – hmmm
I was talking to a friend earlier this evening, and I can see where you (Dave) are coming from with this annoyance at left brain/ right brain science. We were talking about how in high school, our English teachers were surprised to find out we did well in math as well, because they had this idea that people could only really excel in either language or quantitative abilities, but not both. It goes along with right brain/ left brain thinking, and is a very constricted way of looking at creativity, intelligence, and neurobiology. It’s not a good way to categorize people or their abilities.