Think of your brain as a sitcom with two leading actors who play roommates. There’s the organized, sock-folding, spreadsheet-loving roommate and the spontaneous, art-on-the-walls, Bob-Ross-loving roommate. And, somehow, these two unlikely friends come together equally to steer the screenplay that is YOU and your human experience on this Earth.
In this windy metaphor for your brain, the orderly, analytical roommate represents the left hemisphere of your brain and the creative, emotional roommate, the right hemisphere. (Because, indeed, your brain is divided into two hemispheres.)
Each of these hemispheres are responsible for controlling different aspects of your thinking but they come together in a synergy that is complex and symphonic. Trying to simplify the brain’s functions into left brain vs. right brain is like trying to draw a rainbow with only two crayons; however, for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to forge ahead with this characterization.
(For more advanced discourse on left brain vs. right brain functioning, kindly take the MCAT and go to medical school.)
In this article, we’ll answer in broad strokes:
- What’s the difference between the left brain vs. the right brain?
- What does it mean if you’re a left-brain person? Or right-brain dominant?
- Is “left brained” or “right dominant” even a thing?
- If they are, what can you do to optimize the left/right brain characteristics you’re #blessed with, while maybe overcoming some of the shortcomings?
It’s all here, and I’m glad you’re along for the ride! Let’s dive right in…
Left brain vs. right brain: What’s the difference?
The two hemispheres of your brain look very much alike but there are important differences in how they process information. This was first discovered in the 1960s by Nobel Prize-winning psychobiologist, Roger W. Sperry. According to Sperry’s (now dated) research, if you are left-brain dominant, you’re naturally gifted with:
- Logic and reasoning
- Sequencing
- Math
- Science
- Language learning and processing
- Grammar
- Fact-based thinking
Picture a little chemistry lab filled with bespectacled, number-crunching nerd minions. The left hemisphere is the analytical, rational center of your brain. So, if you have a habit of acing your math quizzes, effortlessly dropping words in conversation that people need to Google, or trying to win arguments with your significant other by rationalizing them out of their feelings, you may be left-brain dominant.
The right hemisphere of the brain is your wellspring of creativity, imagination, spatial awareness, and recognition of people, places, and things. Here, flare jeans and flowy blouse-wearing minions flounce about cooking up new creative ideas, thinking in metaphors, and experimenting with imagination. To put it in Sperry’s words, if you are right-brain dominant, you naturally excel at:
- Using your imagination
- Holistic thinking
- Using your intuition
- Arts
- Rhythm
- Nonverbal cues
- Feelings visualization
- Daydreaming
Side note: Interestingly, the dyslexic brain is powerfully right-sided and therefore super creative, a most wonderful benefit to an otherwise frustrating condition that can make it very difficult to read, sequence tasks correctly, and recall information. Read more about how dyslexia impacts learning here.
So there you have it: left brain vs. right brain and what it means, in theory at least, to be more dominant in the other.
By the way, did you know that each hemisphere of the brain controls the opposite side of the body AND gets information from the opposite visual field? This is why a stroke on the left side of the brain affects the right side of the body, causing symptoms like right-sided paralysis and speech and language problems.
Isn’t that nuts?
Well, whichever divine creator’s idea that was, it was written into the biology of Earth’s vertebrates at some point in our evolution and is now an immutable fact.
How do the two sides of the brain work together?
The idea that every single person is either left-brain dominant or shows right-brain characteristics fits the human desire to package everything into discrete boxes. But think of it this way: if you’re right-handed, does that mean your left hand lies limply at your side, as useful as a shaving kit to a Wookiee?
Of course not!
Both hands play fundamental roles in dressing, eating, playing sports, smacking your siblings, and generally interacting with the world. But your right hand—if you’re like 85-90% of the Western world’s population—is typically stronger and more coordinated than your left hand: the leading actor to your left hand’s supporting role; Indiana Jones to your Short Round. Both are awesome but one takes the lead.
According to psychobiologist Roger W. Sperry, the same applies to the two hemispheres of your brain. This sticky idea was embraced until 2013, when researchers at the University of Utah threw an epic spanner in the works of the theory of right brain vs. left brain dominance. After conducting MRIs on over 1,000 people, they wrote the following:
“It has been conjectured that individuals may be left-brain dominant or right-brain dominant based on personality and cognitive style, but neuroimaging data has not provided clear evidence whether such phenotypic differences in the strength of left-dominant or right-dominant networks exist.”
Who says “conjectured”?
Anyway, the point is that these researchers didn’t find physical evidence in one side of the brain working harder or showing more development than the other. While the two brain hemispheres work differently, one side is not stronger than—or “dominant over”—the other, unless it’s damaged.
So, when someone is described as right-brain dominant, it means that they tend to see, approach, and think about the world more through the right-brain lens than the left-brain lens. What it doesn’t mean is that the other hemisphere of their brain is chilling on a beach in Ibiza while their right brain calls the shots.
Likewise, despite what some bully may have told you in middle school, neither brain size nor strength correlates to intelligence. It’s the strength of your neural connections that determines how skilled you are at a particular task or area of knowledge and—wonderful news—neural connections can be strengthened with practice!
This is literally the whole idea behind the study app Brainscape, which uses spaced repetition to help you learn information 2-5 times faster than traditional study techniques.
Because of this, it is possible to develop your skills in either brain hemisphere.
Balancing your left brain vs. right brain thinking
So, it’s clear that the two hemispheres of the brain work just as hard as each other. It’s just that some people show more advanced neural connections in certain areas that either lie on the analytical left or the creative right side. And, like I just mentioned, neural connections are built through practice, which means that it’s within your control to develop the skills you feel you’re lacking.
Let’s say, for instance, you’re the stereotypical artistic type who’s super creative, empathetic, and imaginative… but your apartment looks like the serengeti after the wildebeest migration and you kinda wish you could get your sh*t together. Well, you CAN teach yourself to start noticing mess and disorder:
- Put a sticky note up on the door frame of your living room or bedroom that reads: “Stop and look”. Use this as a prompt every time you leave the room to intentionally assess its condition.
- If the bed is unmade, if there are food wrappers on the floor, if the bin is overflowing, if your desk is a total mess, and so on… FORCE yourself in that moment of exiting to clean just one thing, even if it’s just taking one dirty plate with you to the kitchen.
- With repetition (and being strict about adhering to your new rule), the mere act of exiting the room will trigger the habit of turning around and looking for something to clean up or take with you to the kitchen.
Voila! You’ve built a habit that’ll help you keep a more orderly environment!
By the same token, sitting down at your desk to write just 500 words every single day will eventually teach you to be a better, more confident writer. And practicing a language or plucking a guitar for an hour a day will inch you towards proficiency in either, regardless of whether you think you’re left-brain- or right-brain dominant.
(For more advice on how to change your habits—and learn anything—read “How we learn: the secret to all learning & human development” or watch this video…)
Remember, it’s not a simple matter of being strongly one OR the other. Most people have skill sets controlled by both hemispheres of the brain. For instance, you might be super creative, but also analytical and organized.
Whatever the skill it is you’d like to build or the knowledge you’d like to gain, you can do so through mindful, routine practice. (And Brainscape is the perfect, scientifically optimized tool for helping you accomplish that if your goal is geared towards knowledge acquisition and learning!)
Final thoughts on the left brain vs. right brain debate
The brain is a big squishy bowl of pink noodles with a hyper-intelligence we’re far from fully understanding. What we do know is that the left hemisphere of the brain governs more analytical, rational thought while creativity and imagination is the domain of the right hemisphere. And while both serve us in equal measure, many people have proficiencies that would seem to place them in one camp or the other: left-brain dominance or right-brain characteristics.
We now know that, from a scientific perspective, these are really just labels. Your cognitive, skill-based strengths come down to which region of the brain shows the most neural development, which can be built through practice.
There are naturally exceptions to this: neurodivergence and brain trauma can alter a person’s ability to build skills in a specific area. But assuming you’ve got a typical brain that’s also healthy, there likely isn’t a single skill you can’t get better at with enough practice, devotion, and motivation, whether your talents lie more in the left or right hemisphere of your brain!
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