There is, unfortunately, an unscientific idea that has gained common currency regarding the differing “capabilities” of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. This article comments that the myth is probably destined to endure, despite the efforts of researchers to provide a more complex and accurate explanation:
So if you consider yourself to be creative, realise that it’s not just half your brain that is making it happen.
Martin.
I’m not sure I agree that it’s so much a myth, as it is a simplification for people who don’t really care how the brain works. “I’m a right-brainer” is just another way of saying “I’m creative/I’m not very good with math or science”. There are surely a massive number of people who don’t know, and don’t care that most activities we engage in require both hemispheres to some extent, or that damage in one area can lead to other parts of the brain, even the other ‘half’, taking over for that function.
Jumping to the first issue I had with the article as written… what, exactly is this myth he’s writing about? Is the myth that language is mostly a left-brain activity, or that it’s solely left-brain? Is the myth that there are two halves of the brain, with zero interaction between them, or is the myth that there is only a minor exchange of information across the divide between the two? For a complete lay-person, I think I have an inkling as to the complexity of the human brain; I know, for one, that the right and left sides of the brain, like most biological systems, do not work in isolation (unless they are forced to by damage or other non-ideal circumstances).
The article leaves me wondering if my understanding is largely flawed, or if the only thing between me an a greater understanding of this myth is a degree in neurobiology. 
Left brain / right brain is really just a stereo typing of an “average” finding.
Saying it is a myth though is like saying that differences in the sexes are myths as well since it does not apply to ALL of the sex but just a dominate majority or a test sample pool.
(Men have better peripheral vision, women have better sense of taste and in view colors, men are better at spatial thinking, women are better at object oriented directions, men are better at single task procedures, women are better at multi-tasking).
In reality there is more science supporting left/right brain generalization than there is for man made global warming. So with that logic is man made global warming a myth as well? (Truth: No one knows yet because we do not have the technology to detect if man effects climate on any proven scale. (You would have to decide based on assumptions and “theories” on both sides of the argument).
So I would shy away from boldly claiming against all the science that all of a sudden this has to be myth because it varies from person to person and look at it for what it is, a simple generalization or “stereo typing” noted similarities among test subjects doing certain actions.
Example is Lying is right brain activity in most people. (hence the looking up and to the left in many body language studies). The loss of time and driving, drawing upside down to “trick” the left side of the brain, or left side and logic in most people.
And this is where I have an advantage. -->
No brain.
Which explains why you’re neither creative nor logical? 
that might be an insult.
I’m not sure. What part of my non-existent brain should know that?
I’d never insult you, Jaysen, but I think it’s the hippopotamus part of the brain.
Ah. That part migrated to my waistline before my head removal so I should be all set for insult detection.
Given that I did not detect an insult you must be joshing. [size=60]interesting word that. I wonder where it originates?[/size]
Edward de Bono bit.ly/JdUOh7 has a lot to say about the brain and thinking. Don’t believe he ever mentioned left/right.
Its all mostly easy reading. A sample:
Belief
A woman is wheeling along a pram in which are her two children aged three and five years.
An acquaintance comes up to her and looks at the children:
‘Aren’t they beautiful children?’ gushes the acquaintance.
‘Oh, never mind them,’ replies the mother, ‘you should see their photographs—now those are really beautiful.’
I sometimes use this story when addressing a conference.
People always laugh at the absurdity of the photograph being more important than the real thing.
So I go on to explain my point.
Maybe the photographs are more important than the children.
When you see the photographs you see beauty and the photograph will be the same for ever (a reasonable number of years).
The children will grow and change.
When you look at the children you may see a smiling child or a dribbling child or a fractious child but the photograph always shows beauty.
Perhaps the purpose of the children is only to create beautiful photographs.
This seems a perverse and outrageous point of view, but it is not.
Perhaps the purpose of life is to create beautiful and enduring myths and it is these we are meant to enjoy.
Day-to-day reality is there only to fuel the myths.
It is true that myths and beliefs are easy and often false and impossible to substantiate.
Yet they may be the true reality for a perceptual system.
Myths provide beauty, purpose, value, comfort, security and emotional fuel.
It is also true that beliefs can stand in the way of progress and have, in the past, been responsible for very much suffering—and passive acceptance of what might have been changed.
I have dealt with belief at so many different points in this book that I do not wish to repeat all I have written, so I shall summarize it very simply.
A belief is a perceptual framework which leads us to see the world in a way which reinforces that framework.
This circularity is a very natural function of a self-organizing patterning system, so beliefs are very easy to form.
In a sense ‘belief’ is the truth of a perceptual system.
When you burn your finger at a fire only once in your lifetime, you are operating a belief system.
Your fear of fire is not built up by induction based on repeated experience.
Your initial trauma creates a belief that prevents you from ever contradicting that belief, so the circularity is established.
Above is from I am right, You are wrong bit.ly/LF3nBJ (A summary of how we think)
Practical Thinking has an interesting experiment to consider: bit.ly/JLhWTM
Bob
Braaaaaaaaaaaaaains.
I wonder how the left brain/right brain thing factors into creative tasks that are almost mathematical? Case in point, when I write music, I’m using LISP, which is very math-like. (So I’m told. I never did well in traditional math classes, but I do a lot with that and lace knitting, which is extremely procedural/algorithmic.) I’ve also heard mathematicians speak about math as a creative act.
Then again people I know who’re involved in fMRI studies of brains are always quick to point out that the mappings are averages–just because one area lights up on one person in a given situation doesn’t mean that it’ll light up in the same place (or even same hemisphere) on another person.
Photoshop
Here is a fun test. Take a picture and a piece of paper and draw what you see in the picture. Try very hard to draw it exactly like the picture. After 15 minutes take a break. Come back and hide your previous drawing. Take out a new sheet of paper and turn it upside down. Take the picture and turn it upside down. Now spend 10 minutes drawing upside down.
After you are done compare the two. The upside down one on average will be a more accurate rendering.
I am a very visual and creative person. I am also a math major. I’ve spent years tutoring math and computer science. I constantly come up against students who tell me they aren’t good at math because they are artists. More often than not, once I have worked with them for a while and have taught them how to approach math visually, they realize that they are not only good at math, but they also love it.
There definitely are people with different ways of thinking. Some people are very linear thinkers and tend to be very literal. They do also tend to be better at following steps, but they suck at applying those same steps to new types of problems. The more visual and creative thinkers have an easier time seeing how two problems relate to each other, even if they have never seen one of them before. They tend to understand math beyond the step-by-step, input-output type of system.
Creative people can be very good at math and science. The problem is, creative people also tend to be really, really bad at arithmetic, myself included. I think the left brain/right brain mode of thinking has done a real disservice to these people. Once they see they are not good at arithmetic, the idea that they are not good at math is pushed onto them. A lot of them never get a chance to really explore math and science, because they have been fed the idea that they are plain bad at it, so there is no hope.
I’ve also noticed that a lot of linear thinkers who have been pushed toward the maths and sciences tend to self destruct in college. Advanced math and science require creativity, not rote memorization and input-output style question solving.
So, I guess my point in all of this is that the left brain/right brain idea is holding people back. It’s boxing people in categories that really don’t fit. Even if it is true that right brain people are more creative and left brain people are more linear, it is not true that left brain people are better at math and science. Left brain people might be better at linear problem solving, but life is rarely linear. Advanced math is certainly not linear.
When I took Diff Eq, all the linear left-brain guys were failing out, because they couldn’t wrap their heads around the problems. They weren’t being asked to memorize a formula and regurgitate it. They were being asked to understand a concept and apply it to an entirely different situation. That requires spatial understanding and critical thinking skills, which they mostly lacked.
Interestingly enough, my former doctoral chair talked about mathematics as a poetic medium in a paper. I thought he was nuts, but the more I thought about it, the more it makes sense.
The only math stuffs I wuz good ats was dis equations.
B 4 I 4 Q U
18
Q T π
You forgot one: 8008135
A lesson I’ve learned, not from books or lectures, but from taking a great many photographs, and particularly, from an incident forty years ago. The incident:
One of my sons was playing, with several others his age, in a small ravine on an adjacent farm. My neighbor was out taking pictures with his (even then) small camera. At one point, the boys were shoving one another into a small stream. My son lost his balance, and started to topple into the water. It was summer time, and the water was no more than a foot deep, so there was no danger – only discomfort and, perhaps, embarrassment. And he caught his balance, did not fall.
My neighbor happened to take a picture at that moment, a picture with a small cheap film camera, from about twenty feet away. A week later, he showed me the picture he had taken. A three-by-four black and white print. Several figures were visible, including one who seemed at an uncomfortable angle. His head was turned, so even I could not be certain it was my son. “Look,” the neighbor said, “there’s your boy, just before he fell into the creek. Look at the scared look on his face!”
It was impossible to determine, from that photograph, exactly which look was on his face, or even for certain which of several boys it was. And he did not fall into the creek. Yet my neighbor had an image in mind, and that photograph triggered it. Therefore, the photograph was, for him, evidence that his memory was accurate.
The lesson(s): Not everyone sees the same thing in a photograph. Particularly, someone not present when the photo was taken will not – cannot – see what is in the mind of someone who was. A photograph is a representation of a moment in space, in time, from a specific and perhaps unique viewpoint and with a specific frame of reference.
Much as I love photography, and am pleased with some of the pictures I have taken, none of my pictures, or anyone else’s, is more beautiful – or ugly or colorful or true – than that which it represents.
Which it represents. It does not accurately, not fully, not honestly present. It represents. It suggests. It reminds. When we look at it, we interpolate our own memories and emotions and attitudes. It is a graphic aide-mémoire. That it may also be a work of art, or a piece of crap, is immaterial.
The myths are there only to fuel day-to-day reality.
Or delusion.
ps