Solving Brain Puzzles : Left And Right Brain Functions | Nervous System Disorders and Diseases slideshows | Body & Health Conditions center

Brain Anatomy

The brain is our most complex organ. What individual parts is it made up of? The brainstem connects to the spinal cord and regulates essential functions like breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, and digestion. It also keeps us awake when we need to be. The cerebellum is located at the back of the brain, and it is responsible for movement and balance. The frontal lobe is — you guessed it — at the front of the brain. It's responsible for behavior, emotions, organizing, problem solving and attention. You'll find the occipital lobe in the back of your brain, where it processes visual information. The parietal lobe can be divided into two parts, and is associated with orientation, language, and sensation. The temporal lobes play a role in verbal and visual memory and help us interpret sound and smell correctly.

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Brain Evolution

Did you know that the human brain has tripled in size over the last seven million years? Most of that growth happened during the last two million years. We know this because researchers looked at ancient skulls. It's not just the size of the brain that changed, it's structure also changed to accommodate more complex cognitive functions, and of course language. The irony is that the brain has actually started shrinking again over the last 10,000 years, perhaps due to less varied nutrition.

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Numerical Skills

The theory of right-brain left-brain dominance, according to which each side of the brain controls certain functions, is pretty popular at the moment. Popular psychology further holds that individuals tend to be either "left brained" or "right brained". The truth is more complicated. Numerical skills are often said to be concentrated on the left side of the brain. It's true that remembering math facts happens in the left hemisphere. Computation including exact calculations, comparisons and estimation happens on both sides of the brain, however. The brain is much less one-sided than we thought, in other words!

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Analytical processes, Logic, Reasoning

The left-brain right-brain dominance theory asserts that the left side of the brain is responsible for tasks associated with analytical processes, logic in general, and reasoning and critical thinking in particular. This side of your brain is where planning, organizing and paying attention to details mainly takes place. If you engage in risk assessment, scientific thinking, or something that requires precision you'll also be using the left side of your brain. Don't think that this means that highly logical people cannot be creative as well, though — that myth has been debunked.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_hemisphere
http://www.biausa.org/living-with-brain-injury.htm
http://yourbrainhealth.com.au/left-brain-right-brain-myth/

Written And Spoken Language

Have you always thought of math and languages as two entirely different things? If so, you're not alone. Students are likely to be categorized as "mathy" or "good at languages". Along with math comes science, and along with languages comes reasoning. It's interesting to know that language skills are definitely concentrated on the left side of the brain, so people who injure their left brains tend to have trouble processing and using language. Grammar, vocabulary, and language processing happens on the left side, but the right side isn't left out entirely. The right side of your brain is responsible for intonation and accent.

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Creativity

The right side of the brain is popularly associated with creative tasks. It is said to be responsible for recognizing faces, expressing feelings, artistic creativity, music, color and images, and intuition. Research shows that these functions tend to be controlled bilaterally — on both sides of the brain. So resist the temptation to label yourself right-brained if you happen to be really creative. Your linguistic and numerical skills may be just as good, and your creative processes may not even be right-brain dominated. It's safe to say that the very idea that brain functions are neatly divided into sides would be called a "left-brained" concept... if, that is, the theory was actually true.

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Imagination

Research shows that 11 areas in all four hemispheres are responsible for imagination. These areas were mapped by a team of scientists, who published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in September 2013. These 11 brain areas were found to manipulate images, come up with new ideas, deconstruct symbols and provide the mental focus we need to do all those things successfully. The essential conclusion of the study is that all four areas of the brain work together when it comes to creativity.

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www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201309/the-right-brain-is-not-the-only-source-creativity

Emotions

Emotions seem to be centered around a part of the brain called the limbic system, within two areas called the amygdala and hippocampus. The amygdala is responsible for handling emotional responses to events we experience, and it also processes fear. The hippocampus handles memory, which is a crucial part of our emotional responses. Sensory input has to go through the thalamus, another part of the limbic system, to reach the cortex. It can decide whether an impulse is too powerful to deal with, and can act as a trauma filter.

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curiosity.discovery.com/question/where-emotions-in-brain

Left/Right Brain Side Functions Overview

The left-brain right-brain dominance theory is, in conclusion, a fraud. It's only in recent years that science has advanced to the point where we can truly start to understand how the brain works. Different parts of the brain work together to produce a whole. If a person sustains brain injury, the part of the brain that is injured does affect in which ways that person will be impaired. Left hemisphere functions include computation and language (grammar and vocabulary). Right hemisphere functions include other aspects of numeracy, and intonation and accent. Other functions appear to be controlled bilaterally by both sides of the brain.

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Brain Development

Research shows that the first four years of life are critical for brain development. A newborn's brain weighs only 25 percent of its eventual adult weight, but a lot is going on in there. Synaptic development and reorganization happens during childhood and well into adolescence, and the experiences of young people literally shape their brains. The superior temporal cortex is the last to mature, at around 17 years of age. Though connections are lost as a person matures, the remaining ones have been found to be present with purpose — the most effective connections remain.