Left-brain or right-brain? A modern myth rooted in racism

Many of you between 16 to 35 must have taken "Am I right brain or left brain dominant?" sort of tests online at least once in your life. Your results may have looked like, "75% right, 25% left!" Voila! 

You go to think how sorry the world has been to not notice your creative juices.

All it needed to 'truly' know thyself was a set of cool online questionnaires. And knowing this, you may even have resented studying science, or engineering, and why not arts and literature?

But as neuroscientists would suggest, by this way of thinking, you may be underestimating the brain's endless potential.

One of the most persisting modern myths is that the human brain is sharply split into two halves (hemispheres) - left and right. People with "more functional" left brains are claimed to be analytical, disciplined and less emotional. For creativity, artistic approaches, spontaneity and strong emotions – a "more functional" right brain is cited.

However, modern science has ample evidence that the brain does not function independently of each other. There is no 'unlocking' certain brain half that makes one either analytical and disciplined, or creative and spontaneous.

While the two halves process different types of stimuli in different manners, they work together.

In fact, this whole brain myth dates back to the 19th-century sinister ideas on white male supremacy. Yet, science could not convince the broader public otherwise – as the belief is persistent among all classes of people – be they laypersons, schoolteachers, academicians, writers or corporations.

A myth linked to racism and sensation 

Our brain is structurally divided into right and left hemispheres. The division is visible from the outer side. Components at the inner areas also come as pairs - split between each side.

Most of that outer side is the forebrain known as the cerebrum. This is the most developed part of the brain. This part broadly regulates all conscious actions an individual performs in their daily life.

Today, it is known that certain tasks are initiated and regulated in the left brain – basic language formation, writing and elementary math skills. Meanwhile, the right half responds first to stimuli involving visual processing, sensation, metaphors and analogies.

But this was not how things used to be seen even around a century and a half ago.

According to Dr Nadim Mahmud, a neuroscience researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the United States, "the left-right brain kind of false belief was circulated in the early 1800s and became popular due to the lack of scientific evidence."

Indeed, around the 1860s, Paul Broca, a French physician, observed that patients with the injured left half of the brain struggled with their speaking ability.

This first led to the idea that the left half regulates language formation. While on paper a harmless observation, it must be seen in the context of the viciously racist anthropological and medical practices around that time in Europe.

Europe during Broca's time was pioneering crude notions that human races and cultures could be categorised from barbaric (the colonised) to civilised (Europeans).

This was also the time when remarks on personality traits and intelligence of people used to be made based on craniometry – the study of the brain's external features, shape and size.

And when the left brain was pinned as the reason humans (Europeans) could create "dignified" virtues like the languages they spoke, the right half was posed as the antithesis.

The idea would be extended to the left half being attributed to male traits – logic, morality and 'high' thinking. The right half was demonised as 'female' and more 'ethnic' – primal, unreasoning and emotional. All these caught the attention of the public mind real quickly.

You may recall the 1886 masterpiece "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde."

The second wave of left-brain right-brain hoo-ha appeared during the 1950s and beyond.

There were reports on the right brain being far from 'inferior' and having its own unique intellectual prowess – spatial recognition and giving meaning to languages.

In 1960, a Caltech study observed patients undergoing split-brain surgery. Importantly, the neural networks of these patients were cut as a last-resort treatment for epilepsy.

The investigation showed the left brain responding to language cues, and the right brain to nonverbal activities.

On a social canvas, however, these scientific findings were exaggerated and sensationalised into an "analytical vs creative half"esque cultural buzz.

Just an interesting note here – the Hippie counterculture movement was at its peak around the same time.

The brain works as a unit, not as split halves 

Research in the last 30 years utilised advanced brain imaging tools like MRI. One thing has been confirmed – the brain's function is far more complex than a simple left-right division.

Most of the understanding of the brain is based on studying stroke or split-brain cases. As a result, the split-brain functionality claim is always relying on simplified information.

This claim seldom acknowledges that the two halves constantly, and rapidly, communicate through the neural networks.

Nadim focused on this, "our whole brain has billions of neurons, and the activation of neurotransmitters and modulators carries information from neurons to others [parts of the brain].

We know how our brain stores certain chemical signals as information. Collecting and practising that information gives us new ideas and ways of solving problems."

What he says echoes modern neuroscience research on this topic - the brain's function is about collaborative efforts within.

A 2013 research led by Jeffrey Anderson at the University of Utah analysed more than a thousand MRI images of brains to conclude that lateralisation [certain brain half performing only certain tasks] "appears to be a local rather than global property of brain networks."

This PLOS One paper also states that their analysis stands against the idea of "a whole-brain phenotype of greater "left-brained" or greater "right-brained" network strength."

Take music – PET, a special X-ray technique, on brains, revealed that the left half of the brain in musicians is very strongly active, more than non-musicians when they listen to and write musical pieces.

This is contrary to popular belief that music is exclusively a right-brain task.

A myth ingrained in society 

Imagine scientists working in the laboratory.

They are taken as the benchmark example of "left brain" people. Scientists indeed analyse and interpret data from their experiments. But the design of experiments involves not only step-by-step reasoning but visual imagination, intuition and abstract creativity too.

Yet, the myth is very strongly ingrained in society. An example is author Betty Edwards's 1979 Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain – which became a must-read in art school professionals around the world.

Corporates, especially people in the management, business solutions and motivation industry, very much exploit superstitions by touting "right-brain solutions" (read genius ideas) to problems.

The internet is overwhelmed by the presence of pseudoscience gurus boasting about their methods to activate the 'spiritual' half, the right brain, for curing your social and mental ailment.

In the United Kingdom, about a shocking 90% of schoolteachers endorse the misconception.

The implication of an idea such as this is much deeper – especially for women. Society's reluctance to encourage females to pursue more STEM education is backed by superstitions like female brains are inherently 'right' – therefore not 'analytical' enough.

But has neuroscience not already taught us such concepts are baseless, bigoted and hugely misleading? Nadim has some answers to why these persist. "We only believe myths when we are not aware of the correct information.

If you do not know the information, your neurons will not be trained up. That forms a blank spot in the human brain later to be filled with social prejudices, hoaxes or myths. Therefore, consistent engagement in learning and brain training equips one to navigate the intricate world around."

Adhip Rahman. Sketch: TBS