Left & Right Brain

SPLIT PERSONALITIES

We are cross-wired. That means, our right side of the body is controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain and vica-versa.

The left brain is widely associated with being the verbal, sorting and details orientated side - and in a high percentage of cases, mostly utilised by females the majority of the time. Whereas, the spatial & physical intuitive side - the preferred side for the male. It's often stated that men and women are wired differently - and looking at the properties that the two sides specialise in, we can see where in many instances, there are truths in how men/women think. But everybody is different and we all have preferences learned or habits formed that only fully utilise some parts of the brain and less so of other parts. This horizon BBC documentary challenges all the stereotypes and signifies that these preferences and habits can be changed.

The two sides of the brain were first identified by neurobiologist Roger Wolcott Sperry, to operate independently for utilising opposite sides of the body by experiments carried out on cats and patients in the 60/70's of which he was to win the Nobel Prize. In his words:

Each hemisphere is indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and . . . both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel." —Roger Wolcott Sperry, 1974

This tells us that not only can both sides of the brain work independently, but they can also deceive each other as well. Our right brain, for example, when taking something in the left hand, can fool the left brain. It is believed that the left brain is our more 'conscious' side. This could be really interesting for those using a fork to eat in the left hand as opposed to the right. In situations where tiredness, intoxication or distraction (talking while eating late at a dinner party) could slow down the left (linguistic and more conscious) brain and therefore result in overindulgence.

To learn a bit more about which side of our brains we draw on the most - take the test here.