Science

Left brain vs Right brain: What does the left brain control vs right brain?


The average human brain weighs around 3.3lbs, making up just two percent of a human’s body weight. The largest part of the brain is the cerebrum, which is split into two hemispheres. 

What is the function of the human brain?

The human brain acts as the command centre for the nervous system.

Made up of millions of nerve cells called neurons, these cells can gather and transmit electrochemical signals.

Through these signals, our brains can control the functions of the body, including memory, speech and movement.

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Under these left brain/right brain theories, one side of the brain is thought to be more dominant than the other.

In the 1960s, ground-breaking research was carried out by Roger Sperry et al, who looked into brain function with the “Split-Brain Experiments”.

Roger Sperry was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1981, having revealed some of the first information ever on the difference between left and right hemispheres of the human brain.

The experiment showed different sections of the brain carried out different functions, known as lateralisation.

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The left hemisphere of the brain was found to be more dominant in terms of speech and language, while the right side of the brain was found to be more dominant in terms of visual-motor tasks.

The distinctions between the two hemispheres may have led others to conclude that people can be left or right brain-inclined thinkers.

However, researchers are increasingly finding issues with such theories.

Research carried out in 2016 looked at the brain function of more than a thousand people, measuring strong connections on both sides of the brain.

The researchers found these connections were distributed very evenly between both sides, suggesting there were not stronger connections on one side of the brain over the other.

Study leader Jeffrey Anderson from the University of Utah told BBC Trending: “It is certainly the case that some people have more methodical, logical cognitive styles, and others more uninhibited, spontaneous styles.

“This has nothing to do on any level with the different functions of the [brain’s] left and right hemisphere.”

Mr Anderson added: “The pop culture idea (creative vs. logical traits) has no support in the neuroscience community and flies in the face of decades of research about brain organization, the functional roles of the two brain hemispheres and evidence from patients with lesions in one or the other hemisphere in the brain.”



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