2023-05-23 05:32:51
21/05/2023
Maybe you’ve heard it, because it’s a very popular story regarding the brain and the hemispheres: that people are creative because their right hemisphere is more dominant, and logical because their left is more dominant.
There are those who say that it is a myth, but it is, apparently, a matter of language. “The myth is that there really is no dominance, but there is asymmetry. The hemispheres are asymmetrical, which means that there is one hemisphere that is more involved in some functions than the other, but in the end they do so in a coordinated manner. One hemisphere is not going to dominate more than another nor is it going to give you better qualities”, says José A. Morales, professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Complutense University of Madrid and scientific researcher in neurodegenerative diseases.
Seeking to disprove the myth, Professor Morales in collaboration with his colleague Conchi Lillo -titular professor at the Faculty of Biology and researcher of visual pathologies, University of Salamanca-, wrote the article Neither creativity is to the right nor logic to the left: the neuromyth of the cerebral hemispheres, supported by a review of published scientific articles.
“What we wanted was to dismantle the myth. First, to put an end to those people who take advantage to sell courses by telling you that if you want to be good at painting or music, what you have to do is strengthen your right hemisphere and that in a month they will teach you how… This is completely false. And then because it is a myth that is deeply rooted, even at an academic level and that in the end the only thing it entails is that children are pigeonholed in schools when they were little, ”says Morales.
The brain is divided into two halves, the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere, but this division does not imply that they are isolated and independent structures. The hemispheres are connected by the corpus callosum, which in turn is made up of more than 200 million nerve fibers that carry information from one hemisphere to the other. That is to say, the hemispheres act in coordinationsuch as dividing up the tasks.
“For example, although most of the nuclei involved in language are in the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere is necessary to complete all language functions,” says Morales.
Thus, according to the researchers, it is not possible to divide people between rational/analytical and creative/passionate, much less believe that by being creative we stop being rational and vice versa. It is also not possible to think that the development of creativity or other skills depend on one hemisphere or another, since in reality they have to do with various factors such as genetics, education, practice and early stimuli, among others.
“The proof that this dominance thing is absurd is that you can teach a child to play the piano as a child and you can teach him mathematics and that child as he learns these disciplines, when he grows up he is an excellent pianist and He is an excellent mathematician, and then which hemisphere dominates? Well, both of them, because following all, that is what happens, it is both of them that are involved in functionality”, says Morales.
The researchers propose as a possible origin of the myth, the meeting of the Anthropological Society of Paris in 1865, and as a possible responsible, although without wanting it, they point to the French doctor and anatomist Paul Broca, for saying that “we speak with the left hemisphere”, for to refer to the fact that the brain regions with the greatest involvement in language function are on that side.
“When he said that we speak with the left hemisphere, he is absolutely right, that is, all the cerebral issues that are most involved in language are in that hemisphere, but that does not mean, and that is where the myth comes from, that we have a hemisphere dominance, that is, you have more ability to speak because your left hemisphere is more developed. that’s the mistakesays Morales.
The myth of the cerebral hemispheres can limit people’s learning and development opportunities. Getty photo.
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