Science: Is the Creative Right Brain Theory a Myth?

Yes. That’s according to an article at the Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence

Yet another brain myth bites the dust, joining “we only use 10 percent of our brain,” and other pseudoscience nonsense that tries to cram people in nice neat boxes.

The left hemisphere of your brain, thought to be the logic and math portion, actually plays a critical role in creative thinking, University of Southern California (USC) researchers have found, at least for visual creative tasks (and musical, as previously found).

“We need both hemispheres for creative processing,” said.Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, assistant professor of neuroscience.

More from the same article…

The “creative right brain” myth apparently originated from misinterpretations of Roger Sperry’s split-brain experiments on epileptics in the 60s, which earned him a Nobel Prize in 1981. It has already been debunked.

See, for example, University of Washington neurobiologist Dr. William H. Calvin’s excellent 1983 book,Throwing Madonna:Essays on the Brain (the text of chapter 10, “Left Brain, Right Brain: Science or the New Phrenology?” is accessible here).

Despite that, there are still lots of suppliers of education and training materials based on this myth, and lots of bureaucratic teachers, self-help writers, financial charlatans, polarizing politicians, and quick-buck counselors eager to put people into programmed slots where they can be easily manipulated and controlled.

Caveat emptor