Left vs. right brain - fact or fiction?

We are all familiar with the idea that our right brain is the creative and emotional brain and that our left brain is the logical and analytical brain. Is there any truth to this? Or is it a lazy way to slap labels on people that think and act differently?

Interest in the idea that our left and right brain serve different functions, started in the 1800's when French physician, Pierre Paul Broca, discovered that patients with brain injuries on their left side had speech and language disorders. We know now that Broca made an accurate assumption, as the speech and language centre of most people are indeed located on their left side.

In 1981 Roger Sperry received the Nobel Prize for Medicine/Physiology for his work with "split-brain" patients, and interest in the left and right brain resurged. Sperry helped lead the discovery that cutting the nerves that connect the left and right brain hemispheres, effectively helped treat patients suffering from epilepsy. Sperry invited these patients to take part in a study designed to test their language, vision and motor skills. When a word was presented to them on their right side, which is processed in their left brain, they were able to communicate seeing the word. When the word was presented on their left side, to be processed in their right brain, they could not communicate seeing the word.

This all clearly show us that the two brain hemispheres do have different roles, but how do we get from language processing to creativity and analytical thinking? Turns out researchers are starting to fit the puzzle pieces and the bigger picture is starting to emerge. It seems that our left brain is designed to process familiar information, such as a language we know, while our right brain is designed to process novel information.

Although we all have access to both brain hemispheres it is true that, just as we have a dominant hand, we have a dominant brain hemisphere, which explains why some people prefer routine and others regularly crave change. Although there is much more nuance to the matter, it is fascinating to start to understand how some of our different preference and behaviours may be due to the way our brain is wired.