The human brain is the most important and yet least studied organ of the human body.
Let's figure out what our brain hemispheres are responsible for and why some people have mainly the left one active, while others have the right one.
What is the left hemisphere of the brain responsible for?
The left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for verbal information. It controls reading, speaking and writing. Thanks to its work, a person can remember a variety of dates, facts and events.
Also left hemisphere the brain is responsible for logical thinking. Here, all information received from outside is processed, analyzed, classified and conclusions are formulated. It processes information analytically and sequentially.
What is the right hemisphere of the brain responsible for?
Right By 
the hemisphere of the brain is responsible for processing nonverbal information expressed in images rather than words. This is also where a person’s ability to various types creativity, the ability to indulge in dreams, fantasize, and compose. It is responsible for generating creative ideas and thoughts.
Also right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for recognition of complex images, such as people's faces, as well as the emotions displayed on these faces. It processes information simultaneously and holistically.
It should be noted that for successful life a person needs coordinated work of both hemispheres.
Which hemisphere of your brain is active?
There is a visual, psychophysiological brain hemisphere test(Vladimir Pugach’s test), with which you can easily determine which half of your brain is active in you this moment time. Look at the picture. Which direction is the girl spinning?
If clockwise, it means that at the moment your left hemisphere activity predominates, and if it’s counterclockwise, then right hemisphere activity predominates.
Some may observe the moment when the activity of the hemispheres changes, and then the girl begins to rotate in reverse side. This is characteristic of people (very few) who simultaneously have left-hemisphere and right-hemisphere brain activity, the so-called ambidextrous people.
They can achieve the effect of changing the direction of rotation by tilting the head or sequentially concentrating and defocusing their vision.
What about the child's brain?
The most intensive development of the brain occurs in the first years of a child’s life. And at this time the dominant thing in children is right hemisphere. Since a child learns about the world through images, almost everything thought processes happen exactly in it.
But we live in a world of logic, in a world with at a crazy pace life, we are in a hurry to do everything, we want more for our children. We try to give them the maximum, we stock up on all kinds of techniques early development and practically from the cradle we begin to teach our children to read and count, we try to give them encyclopedic knowledge, giving early stimulation to the left, while the imaginative, intuitive right remains, as it were, out of work.
And, therefore, when a child grows and matures, his left hemisphere becomes dominant, and in the right, due to the lack of stimulation and a decrease in the number of connections between the two halves of the brain, an irreversible decrease in potential occurs.
I want to assure you right away that I am not encouraging you to let mental development your children are left to their own devices. Vice versa! The age of up to 6 years is the most favorable age for developing brain potential. It’s just that development should not be so early as it should be timely. And if it is inherent in nature, that in early age In children, the right is dominant, then maybe it is worth developing it, without trying to early stimulate the work of the left with techniques aimed at developing logical thinking?
Moreover, the opportunities that our children lose in childhood precisely because of the lack of training of the right hemisphere include truly phenomenal abilities. For example: memorizing unlimited amounts of information using images (photographic memory), speed reading, and this is only the beginning of the list of superpowers that your child can have with proper systematic training of the right hemisphere.
I will tell you more about the superpowers that children with a developed right hemisphere have in the next article.
Nadezhda Ryzhkovets
There are more right-handed people in the world, and almost everything is adapted for them, for right-handers. But they don’t have their own day, while left-handers do have one - August 13th. It has been celebrated not so long ago, since the 90s of the last century, and was established on the initiative of the International Left-Handed Club.
MedAboutMe invites you to talk about others interesting facts associated with the functioning of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Left-handedness is just the beginning.
The brain and its two halves
If you could ask Nature questions and get clear answers, one of the questions would probably sound like this:
For what? Why was it necessary to make the hemispheres of the brain different, to endow them with different functions? Why couldn’t they be made symmetrical, with the same tasks, performing the same functions? Why did everything have to be complicated?
I wonder what the answer would be. But for now scientists have to look for it, researching and analyzing, generalizing and drawing conclusions, true and not so true.
What is known today?
The brain is characterized by laterality, that is, asymmetry, in which the right hemisphere is not identical in function to the left. The right hand is controlled by the left hemisphere and vice versa, the left is controlled by the right. The leader is not only the hand, but also the foot, ear, and eye. Right- and left-handedness are determined already in the first trimester of pregnancy. By the 15th week, the fetus begins to suck the finger of the dominant hand. Left-handedness can be passed on from parents to children. In a family where at least one parent is left-handed, a left-handed child is more likely to be born. The likelihood of being born left-handed also increases the stress experienced by the mother during pregnancy. Left-handers are also more common among twins and among children born ahead of schedule. There are more left-handed men than women. Left-handed people are unevenly distributed around the world. They are most numerous in Papua New Guinea - almost 25%, less in the UK and the USA, about 10%. On average, left-handers make up 15% of the world's population. There are practically very few people who are 100% left-handed or right-handed; for the majority, we can only talk about a more or less pronounced predominance of one type or another. In right-handed people, the left hemisphere is responsible for processing information. Lefties have both. It is believed that this provides some advantages: it helps generate unconventional ideas and find non-standard solutions. Ambidextrous people are people who have both hands dominant. It makes no difference to them which hand holds a spoon, a pen, or a hammer. If you're lucky, both arms of an ambidextrous person will be equally developed. It also happens, unfortunately, that both of them turn out to be “leftists”. Left-handed people may experience difficulties with speech development in childhood - after all, the center of speech is located in the left hemisphere, which controls the right hand, which is less developed in them. Problems may extend to both writing and reading. In creative professions and in sports, left-handers have a greater chance of achieving success, so there are quite a lot of left-handers among celebrities in these areas. But for scientists, apparently, left-handedness does not give an advantage, but it does not hinder it either.
Now about the myths.
Left-handedness in children can be eliminated if parents show diligence
Theoretically, it can be eliminated. They still do this in China, and they did it in the USSR, where it was customary to retrain left-handed children to be “like everyone else.”
In fact, this is extremely undesirable. A retrained left-hander often encounters the fact that he simply does not have a leading, well-functioning hand. In addition, forced retraining leads to a mass psychological problems, so as to force one to write right hand it is possible, but the leading hemisphere will still remain the same.
Overtrained left-handers cope worse with writing and reading, they are prone to typical mistakes and absorb information worse.
Ambidextrous people are more successful because they have both hemispheres dominant
Unfortunately, it is not. In fact, ambidextrous people have an even more difficult time in life than left-handed people. As children, they are more likely to have difficulty with languages (including their native language) and writing, they are more susceptible to attention deficit disorder, and they are more likely to be hyperactive. Parents should take this into account when raising an ambidextrous child.
With age, most ambidextrous people still choose one of the hands as the leading one and become more right-handed or left-handed.
Interesting
Artist Xiaonan Song masterfully paints with both hands at the same time. Moreover, he can draw either one drawing with both hands at once, or with two hands at the same time different drawings.
Left-handed brains are better suited to multitasking
“Physicists” and “lyricists” are the result of the predominance of the right or left hemisphere
This is not an entirely correct statement. The hemispheres differ more in the way they process incoming information, rather than in types mental activity. Neither creativity nor rationality can be the result of the activity of one hemisphere; it is always the result of the work of the brain as a whole.
But one hemisphere may indeed predominate. Thus, right-hemisphere left-handers are more inclined to perceive a holistic image, while left-hemisphere right-handers primarily notice details. Some “can’t see the forest for the trees,” while others, on the contrary, see only the “forest” without distinguishing the individual “trees” in it.
People with a more developed left hemisphere are more inclined to analyze and work in the field of exact sciences, but this does not mean that right-brain people are necessarily mediocre in mathematics. They may be no less talented precisely because they approach problems differently. And, as you know, there are many right-handed artists. By the way, in such a direction as hyperrealism, left-hemisphere artists who are attentive to details and subtleties have a better chance.
And one more thing: the degree of activity of the hemispheres changes with age.
Interesting
The left-handed brain is a mirror image of the right-handed brain.
That is, it differs not only in the dominant hemisphere, but also in the localization of various centers in the hemispheres.
This is only partly true and only for 100% of left-handers, and there are no more than a quarter of them total number. For other left-handers, everything is arranged exactly the same as for right-handers. A true left-hander can be determined using tomography, for example, showing which hemisphere is active in a person during speech perception. If it is right, we have a true left-hander, whose center of speech is located in the right hemisphere, and not, like right-handers and “conditional” left-handers, in the left.
Some more facts Left-handedness and right-handedness can affect who you vote for in elections. This applies to undecided voters. Psychologists have found that candidates whose name appears on the ballot on the side of the voter's dominant hand have better chances. Because people subconsciously consider what is on the “right”, dominant side to be more correct and good. Attempts to retrain left-handers lead to neuroses and depression. They do not gain the expected advantages over those who have not been retrained. Left-handed people are indeed somewhat more likely to become victims and perpetrators of accidents and traffic accidents. But not because they have worse reactions or are less attentive, but because everything in the world is more suitable for right-handed people. Left-handers, contrary to previously held beliefs, are not at all more prone to crime or schizophrenia, this is where the notorious Cesare Lombroso was wrong. The percentage of left-handers among criminals is exactly the same as among right-handers. But among successful athletes lefties really stand out. And precisely because of his left-handedness and left-footedness. It is more difficult for the enemy to compete or fight with them, it is more difficult to anticipate their movements, blows or attacks. Left-handers are better developed short term memory, they have greater flexibility of mind, but are less prone to analysis. Expert commentaryDaniel Casasanto, psychologist
Much in his life depends on who a person is, left-handed or right-handed. And not only with which hand he will sign a check or stir sugar in coffee.
The dominant hemisphere can even influence his choice of a life partner. How?
Imagine walking into a bar or bus and seeing several members of the opposite sex there. Those located on the dominant side will seem prettier and more attractive to you - on the right for a right-handed person and on the left for a left-handed person. And the likelihood that a right-handed person will try to meet a right-handed girl is higher. Even if the one sitting on the left is no worse and has the same charming smile.
In a store, right-handed people are more likely to choose a product located on the right, all other characteristics being equal, and left-handed people - on the left.
Left-handed people may react differently to critical situations, which is important in e.g. in case of an accident. A left-handed driver will try to avoid a collision in the wrong direction, and as a result may get hit if the second participant in the accident is right-handed. They will simply try to turn in one direction.
Lefties have to adapt to a right-handed world, and it's not always easy. Everything from scissors to a computer mouse and rules traffic, designed for right-handed people.
But lefties are just a variant of the norm. They should not feel like second-class citizens.
Take the testYour characterThis simple test will allow you to get to know yourself better.
Photos used from Shutterstock
The right and left hemispheres of the brain provide single work of the body, however, they control opposite sides of the human body, each hemisphere performs its own specific functions and has its own specialization. The work of the right and left hemispheres is asymmetrical, but interconnected. What are the left and right hemispheres of our brain “responsible for?” The left half of the brain is responsible for logical operations, counting, establishing a sequence, and the right hemisphere perceives images, general content based on intuition, imagination, creativity; the right hemisphere processes facts, details coming from the left hemisphere, collecting them into a single image and a holistic picture. The left hemisphere strives for analysis, logical sequence, details, cause-and-effect relationships. The right hemisphere provides orientation in space, perception of the whole picture, and records the image and emotions of human faces.
You can easily test which hemisphere of your brain is active at the moment. Look at this picture.
If the girl in the picture is rotating clockwise, then at the moment your left hemisphere of the brain is more active (logic, analysis). If it turns counterclockwise, then your right hemisphere is active (emotions and intuition). It turns out that with some effort of thought, you can make the girl rotate in any direction. Of particular interest is the image with double rotation
How else can you check which hemisphere is more developed?
Clasp your palms in front of you, now interlace your fingers and notice thumb which hand was on top.
Clap your hands and mark which hand is on top.
Cross your arms over your chest, mark which forearm is on top.
Determine your dominant eye.
How can you develop the abilities of the hemispheres.
There are several simple ways development of the hemispheres. The simplest of them is an increase in the amount of work on which the hemisphere is oriented. For example, to develop logic, you need to solve mathematical problems, solve crosswords, and to develop imagination, visit an art gallery, etc. The next way is to maximally use the side of the body controlled by the hemisphere - to develop the right hemisphere, you need to work with the left part of the body, and to work out the left hemisphere, you need to work with the right. For example, you can draw, jump on one leg, juggle with one hand. Exercises for awareness of the right and left hemispheres of the brain will help develop the hemisphere.
Ear-nose
With our left hand we take the tip of the nose, and with our right hand we take the opposite ear, i.e. left. At the same time, release your ear and nose, clap your hands, change the position of your hands “exactly the opposite.”
Mirror drawing
Put it on the table Blank sheet paper, take a pencil. Draw mirror-symmetrical designs and letters with both hands at the same time. When doing this exercise, you should feel your eyes and hands relax, because when both hemispheres work simultaneously, the efficiency of the entire brain improves.
ring
We move our fingers one by one and very quickly, connecting them into a ring with thumb index, middle, ring, little finger. First, you can do it with each hand separately, then with both hands simultaneously.
4. In front of you lies a piece of paper with the letters of the alphabet, almost all of them. Under each letter the letters L, P or V are written. The upper letter is pronounced, and the lower letter indicates movement with the hands. L - left hand rises to left side, R - the right hand rises to right side, B - both hands rise up. Everything is very simple, if only it weren’t so difficult to do it all at the same time. The exercise is performed in sequence from the first letter to the last, then from the last letter to the first. The following is written on the piece of paper.
A B C D E
L P P V L
E F Z I K
V L R V L
L M N O P
L P L L P
R S T U F
V P L P V
X C CH W Y
L V V P L
All of the above exercises aimed at developing the right hemisphere can be used with children.
Visualization exercises .
When you have a free minute, sit your child next to you and invite them to dream up a little.
Let's close our eyes and imagine a white sheet of paper on which in capital letters written your name. Imagine that the letters became blue... And now they are red, and now they are green. They may be green, but the sheet of paper suddenly turned pink, and now yellow.
Now listen: someone is calling your name. Guess whose voice it is, but don’t tell anyone, sit quietly. Imagine that someone is chanting your name while music is playing around you. Let's listen!
Now we will touch your name. What does it feel like? Soft? Rough? Warm? Fluffy? Everyone's names are different.
Now we will taste your name. Is it sweet? Or maybe with sourness? Cold like ice cream or warm?
We learned that our name can have a color, a taste, a smell, and even feel something.
Now let's open our eyes. But the game is not over yet.
Ask your child to talk about his name and what he saw, heard and felt. Help him a little, remind him of the task and be sure to encourage him: “How interesting!”, “Wow!”, “I would never have thought that you had such a wonderful name!”
The story is over. We take pencils and ask them to draw a name. A child can draw whatever he wants, as long as the drawing reflects the image of the name. Let the child decorate the drawing and use as many colors as possible. But don't delay this activity. It is important to finish drawing at a strictly defined time. At this point, you decide for yourself how much time to spend on drawing - a slow kid needs about twenty minutes, but a hurry-up kid will draw everything in five minutes.
The drawing is ready. Let the child explain what certain details mean and what he tried to draw. If it’s difficult for him to do this, help him: “What is this drawn? And this? Why did you draw exactly this?”
Now the game is over, you can rest.
You probably guessed what its essence is. We took the child through all his senses: sight, taste, smell, and forced him to engage in activities, both imagination and speech. Thus, all areas of the brain had to take part in the game.
Now you can come up with other games built on the same principle. For example: " Flower name" - draw a flower that we could call by its name; " I'm an adult" - we try to imagine and draw ourselves as an adult (how I will dress, how I speak, what I do, how I walk, and so on); " Imaginary gift " - let the baby give imaginary gifts to his friends, and tell you what they look like, smell, and feel like.
You are stuck in a traffic jam, on a long train ride, bored at home or in line at the doctor - play the suggested games. The baby is delighted and does not whine: “I’m bored, when will I finally...”, and the parent’s heart rejoices - the child is developing!
We offer you another visualization exercise called " Erasing stressful information from memory ".
Invite your child to sit, relax and close his eyes. Let him imagine in front of him a blank album sheet, pencils, and an eraser. Now invite your child to mentally draw on a piece of paper a negative situation that needs to be forgotten. Next, ask, again mentally, to take an eraser and begin to consistently erase the situation. You need to erase until the picture disappears from the sheet. After this, you should open your eyes and check: close your eyes and imagine the same sheet of paper - if the picture does not disappear, you need to mentally take the eraser again and erase the picture until it disappears completely. It is recommended to repeat the exercise periodically.
By the way, when you do something with both hands at the same time, for example, play musical instrument or even typing text on the keyboard, both hemispheres are working. So this is also a kind of training. It is also useful to perform familiar actions not with your dominant hand, but with the other. Those. right-handers can live the life of left-handers, and left-handers, on the contrary, can become right-handed. For example, if you usually brush your teeth with the brush in your left hand, then periodically switch it to your right. If you write with your right hand, switch the pen to your left. It's not only useful, but also fun. And the results of such training will not take long to arrive.
5. Looking at the picture, you need to say out loud as quickly as possible the colors in which the words are written.
This is how you can harmonize the functioning of the brain hemispheres.
Statement:
The mindset of people with a developed right hemisphere of the brain is creative, and those with a developed left hemisphere are analytical.
Roger Sperry
neuropsychologist
“Indeed, the cerebral hemisphere is an independent cognitive system that perceives, reflects, remembers, reasons and reacts in its own way. […] Both hemispheres can simultaneously process information about the world around them, but in completely different, even mutually contradictory mental experiences that run in parallel.”
Why this is not true:
All people use both the right and left hemispheres of the brain to the same extent.
Although most right-handers have a speech center in the left hemisphere, it does not follow from this that capable writers and speakers use it more often than the right. An experiment by scientists from the University of Utah showed that the hemispheres of the brain are not tied to any type of activity. Dr. Jeff Anderson, head of the university's department of neurosurgery, and his team tracked 7,000 brain regions in more than 1,000 people. The subjects were between 7 and 29 years old and were resting during the experiment.
It turned out that the number of nerve connections in both hemispheres is no different, and people use them with the same intensity. In order to think creatively or analytically, a person must use connections between all parts of the brain. Therefore, the next time you see another test that supposedly establishes which hemisphere is dominant in you, feel free to ignore it.
Shoshina Vera Nikolaevna
Therapist, education: Northern medical University. Work experience 10 years.
Articles written
The brain is the most important organ organism, consisting of. To understand the characteristics of a particular person, it is important to know what the right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for and what the left hemisphere is responsible for.
A person has sense organs with which he is connected with the outside world:
- hearing;
- vision;
- sense of smell;
- taste and tactile sensations through which he receives information.
And all this processing is done by the brain. In addition, it can be used to:
- planning action;
- making decisions;
- coordination of movements;
- recognition of emotions, dividing them into positive and negative;
- development of attention and memory;
- thinking (highest function).
The hemispheres of the brain are not separate structures that work in isolation. There is a gap between them with corpus callosum. This helps both hemispheres function in a coordinated manner.
All movements on one side of the body are controlled by the opposite part of the brain. So, if a person makes a movement with his right hand, it means that it received an impulse from the left hemisphere. In people who have had a stroke (a circulatory disorder in the brain), the side of the body that is opposite to the affected area is paralyzed.
The brain consists of two components – gray and white matter. , under its control is all human activity, and white is nerve fibers that perform many functions that guide the coordinated work of both hemispheres. Gray matter is formed in a person under the age of 6 years.
Functions of the left half
Due to the fact that the brain consists of two hemispheres, each of them is involved to a greater or lesser extent and performs its own functions. This discovery was made less than a century ago by American neurosurgeons Bogen, Vogel and neuropsychologist Sperry.
The left hemisphere is responsible for a person's ability to use language as a means of communication. It controls:
- speech process (construction of phrases, vocabulary);
- the ability to decipher information received through the organs of vision;
- use of graphic signs when writing;
- important information.
Man differs from the entire animal world in that he is the only one who has developed the ability to think, for which the left hemisphere is also responsible.
This side of the brain is capable of not only perceiving information, but also processing it. It is the left hemisphere that recognizes numbers and symbols because it can decipher them.
Since thanks to the left hemisphere a person is able to think logically, it is this part of the brain for a long time was considered leading (dominant). But this is only true when the functions are executed:
- speech;
- letter;
- solving mathematical problems;
- movement of the right half of the body.
Usually different types activities require activation of a certain part of the brain.
Right half tasks
A person’s ability to think exists not only thanks to the work of the left half of the brain, but also the right hemisphere. But for a long time, scientists did not see any particular benefit from the right hemisphere, and surgeons, if damaged, could remove it, considering it the same vestigial organ as the appendix.
It got to the point that a child who was learning to write and took a pen to left hand, retrained and forced to work with my right hand.
Since intuition and specific imaginative thinking are the merit of the right lobe, these functions were not considered important. And intuition was generally ridiculed, and its existence was questioned. It has been proven that this is nothing more than a myth.
Today, those people who can think outside the box are especially valuable, and their creativity is a striking feature of a creative personality. Psychologists believe that for a long time, raising children was left-brained. Therefore in bookstores You can find collections of exercises with which you can learn to stimulate the right hemisphere of the brain.
Based on this, the question arises: if a scientist has developed logical thinking, for which the left hemisphere of the brain is responsible, then why does he need the right one? Maybe he doesn't need it?
Over time, scientists have come to the conclusion that the functions of the right hemisphere are important for the rest of the brain. It turned out that most mathematicians simultaneously use the style of thinking characteristic of the opposite lobe. Ordinary people think with words, but during scientific activity Imagery is often connected to this. Therefore, this ability of both parts to synchronize results in non-standard solutions, inventions, innovations in different areas life.
Albert Einstein began speaking and writing late as a child. This means that his right hemisphere was actively developing during this period. Thanks to him, he created his own signs of inner speech, and then used them in scientific activities. This world-famous scientist was not good at school sciences, except mathematics. But nevertheless, he became an educated person and created the physical theory of relativity, the quantum theory of heat capacity.
Analysis of his brain showed that the left and right hemispheres of the brain are more connected than ordinary people, and some areas are enlarged. This feature allowed the world-famous scientist to give useful inventions to humanity.
The right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for processing nonverbal information, which is presented in the form of pictures, signs, symbols, and diagrams. In addition, a person who has developed right lobe, differs in that it:
- navigates space, collects puzzles;
- has an ear for music and a talent for music;
- understands the subtext of what is said;
- capable of dreaming and fantasizing, inventing, composing;
- has the ability to create, in particular, to draw;
- processes information in parallel from several sources.
These abilities make people interesting, extraordinary, and creative.
Development of the hemispheres
A child's brain works differently than an adult's. These differences are due to the fact that in a baby everything develops in stages, while in an adult it is an already formed organ.
Scientists have proven that the most important periods, influencing the development of emotions, cognitive processes and adaptation in society, are years from 1 to 4. The rate of formation of new neurons in a child is 700 per second. In an adult, the number of connections gradually decreases (hence forgetfulness, inattention, and slow reactions in older people).
First, the child actively develops the areas responsible for perception - vision and hearing. Then the area responsible for speech is activated. Then the process of cognition is formed.
Many parents want their child to develop according to his intended goal. And if the child does not live up to their expectations, they try to “repurpose” the children’s brains and end up with an artist or mathematician.
Every person owns a tool for developing the brain - these are his fingers. To Small child spoke faster, they do exercises with him fine motor skills. For getting active work of the left and right hemispheres, they try to do non-standard actions during the day. For example, those who like to draw try to do it in a mirror image.
Another exercise is “Ring”. They make it from big and index finger hands Then the thumb is alternately connected to the middle, ring and little fingers. This needs to be done as quickly as possible. First with one hand, and then with both at the same time.
During normal exercises, you need to often connect opposite limbs: left hand with right foot and vice versa. You can reach your right ear with your left hand, then do exactly the opposite. It is useful to do daily tasks with an inactive hand:
- fasten buttons on clothes;
- write on paper;
- sweep;
- wipe off dust;
- use cutlery.
As a result, productivity different parts brain
Those who want to study the exact sciences do not need to specialize only in logical problems. By developing imaginative thinking, you can achieve significant results even in physics and mathematics.
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