There’s No Such Thing as Being Right or Left-Brained, And 9 Other Brain Myths We’ve All Heard

However long you’ve been alive, chances are you’ve heard a completely incorrect “fact” about the brain. The human brain is notoriously complicated, and despite many advances in modern science, much of the organ remains a mystery.

I’m still a little girly brain.

Divine Angel said:

I’m still a little girly brain.

That’s a myth.

Tau.Neutrino said:

There’s No Such Thing as Being Right or Left-Brained, And 9 Other Brain Myths We’ve All Heard

However long you’ve been alive, chances are you’ve heard a completely incorrect “fact” about the brain. The human brain is notoriously complicated, and despite many advances in modern science, much of the organ remains a mystery.

+1

> There’s No Such Thing as Being Right or Left-Brained

I’ve been very dubious about right vs left brain ever since it was first announced. If it were true, then a left brain person would have to be right eyed and a right brain person would have to be left eyed, and I’ve never heard any confirmation of that.

I’m right & left brained, which is fortunate since I was issued with both halves at birth.

mollwollfumble said:

> There’s No Such Thing as Being Right or Left-Brained

I’ve been very dubious about right vs left brain ever since it was first announced. If it were true, then a left brain person would have to be right eyed and a right brain person would have to be left eyed, and I’ve never heard any confirmation of that.

No, there is partial decussation of the fibres at the optic chiasm. Quite complicated, but nasal fibres (temporal visual field) cross and temporal fibres (nasal visual field) stay on the same side of the brain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optic_chiasm

Oh, and dominant eye bears little relationship to hand dominance. And can be trained. I don’t have a dominant eye. I have spent 37 years looking in people’s eyes. Their right eye with my right eye, their left eye with my left eye. And with the eye I am not using kept open. I trained out my dominance years ago.

Tau.Neutrino said:

There’s No Such Thing as Being Right or Left-Brained, And 9 Other Brain Myths We’ve All Heard

However long you’ve been alive, chances are you’ve heard a completely incorrect “fact” about the brain. The human brain is notoriously complicated, and despite many advances in modern science, much of the organ remains a mystery.

I read the link as no such thing as left or right handed at first.

I was just a little sceptical about that one.

> 2. We only use 10% of our brain

Mythbusters did this one. Tory managed 30%. But on the millisecond scale less is used at any one time.

Simpsons sent this one up. Bart says (paraphrased) “Some people use 10% of their brain. I am now one of those people.”

> 3. We all have a ‘learning style’

> Many people were taught they had a “learning style” at school, the idea that some people are better at retaining information orally, visually, or by listening. Students who revised with their assessed “learning styles” didn’t do any better in their end of year exams than others.

I like that analysis, but my learning style is “three way input”, typically hear, see and write the information at the same time.

> 4. It’s all downhill when you turn 40

> older people tend to have a better vocabulary, and are better at differentiating between the nuances of language. Also, they are better judges of character, know how to deal with conflict better, and can more easily keep their emotions in check.

OK. Not all downhill.

> 7. Drinking alcohol kills your brain cells

Dang it, I didn’t know this was a myth. Back in the 1980s I always used to refer to drinking as “killing brain cells”. Perhaps it only kills synapses – or makes you a lawyer. Mrs m’s father say that red wine kills 600 brain cells per glass.

> 9.

> Research has shown we overestimate how happy social and leisure activities will make us. We also overestimate how miserable things like Monday mornings will make us. If someone close to you dies, you can’t predict the grief and despair you feel, but it also doesn’t tend to last as long as people expect.

Interesting

> 10. Research in the 1950s found that if students at the University of California at Irvine listened to 10 minutes of a Mozart sonata before taking an IQ test, they improved their scores by 8 points – and it was known as the “Mozart effect.”

LOL.

got its own bullshit that article.

buffy said:

mollwollfumble said:

> There’s No Such Thing as Being Right or Left-Brained

I’ve been very dubious about right vs left brain ever since it was first announced. If it were true, then a left brain person would have to be right eyed and a right brain person would have to be left eyed, and I’ve never heard any confirmation of that.

No, there is partial decussation of the fibres at the optic chiasm. Quite complicated, but nasal fibres (temporal visual field) cross and temporal fibres (nasal visual field) stay on the same side of the brain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optic_chiasm

Oh, and dominant eye bears little relationship to hand dominance. And can be trained. I don’t have a dominant eye. I have spent 37 years looking in people’s eyes. Their right eye with my right eye, their left eye with my left eye. And with the eye I am not using kept open. I trained out my dominance years ago.

> nasal fibres (temporal visual field) cross and temporal fibres (nasal visual field) stay on the same side of the brain.

Um what? Will look up that reference. It lacks hyperlinks for “temporal hemiretina”, “inferonasal retina” and “superonasal retinal fibers” and there’s no definition of any of the three anywhere else in Wikipedia. So that’s no help.

I was thinking of a medical study of a person who had had surgery separating the left and right sides of his brain. He could not describe by voice what he was seeing with one eye, but could draw it with one hand.

I’m right-eyed, but that’s because my left eye has stronger myopia than my right.

mollwollfumble said:

buffy said:

mollwollfumble said:

> There’s No Such Thing as Being Right or Left-Brained

I’ve been very dubious about right vs left brain ever since it was first announced. If it were true, then a left brain person would have to be right eyed and a right brain person would have to be left eyed, and I’ve never heard any confirmation of that.

No, there is partial decussation of the fibres at the optic chiasm. Quite complicated, but nasal fibres (temporal visual field) cross and temporal fibres (nasal visual field) stay on the same side of the brain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optic_chiasm

Oh, and dominant eye bears little relationship to hand dominance. And can be trained. I don’t have a dominant eye. I have spent 37 years looking in people’s eyes. Their right eye with my right eye, their left eye with my left eye. And with the eye I am not using kept open. I trained out my dominance years ago.

> nasal fibres (temporal visual field) cross and temporal fibres (nasal visual field) stay on the same side of the brain.

Um what? Will look up that reference. It lacks hyperlinks for “temporal hemiretina”, “inferonasal retina” and “superonasal retinal fibers” and there’s no definition of any of the three anywhere else in Wikipedia. So that’s no help.

I was thinking of a medical study of a person who had had surgery separating the left and right sides of his brain. He could not describe by voice what he was seeing with one eye, but could draw it with one hand.

I’m right-eyed, but that’s because my left eye has stronger myopia than my right.

Temporal hemiretina = the half of the inside of the eyeball that is towards the outside, near the temple

Inferonasal retina = lower part (infero) of the inside of the eyeball towards the nose side

Superonasal retina = upper (supero) part of the inside of the eyeball towards the nose side.

buffy said:

mollwollfumble said:

buffy said:

No, there is partial decussation of the fibres at the optic chiasm. Quite complicated, but nasal fibres (temporal visual field) cross and temporal fibres (nasal visual field) stay on the same side of the brain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optic_chiasm

Oh, and dominant eye bears little relationship to hand dominance. And can be trained. I don’t have a dominant eye. I have spent 37 years looking in people’s eyes. Their right eye with my right eye, their left eye with my left eye. And with the eye I am not using kept open. I trained out my dominance years ago.

> nasal fibres (temporal visual field) cross and temporal fibres (nasal visual field) stay on the same side of the brain.

Um what? Will look up that reference. It lacks hyperlinks for “temporal hemiretina”, “inferonasal retina” and “superonasal retinal fibers” and there’s no definition of any of the three anywhere else in Wikipedia. So that’s no help.

I was thinking of a medical study of a person who had had surgery separating the left and right sides of his brain. He could not describe by voice what he was seeing with one eye, but could draw it with one hand.

I’m right-eyed, but that’s because my left eye has stronger myopia than my right.

Temporal hemiretina = the half of the inside of the eyeball that is towards the outside, near the temple

Inferonasal retina = lower part (infero) of the inside of the eyeball towards the nose side

Superonasal retina = upper (supero) part of the inside of the eyeball towards the nose side.

Thanks for that. In that case, “nasal fibres (temporal visual field) cross and temporal fibres (nasal visual field) stay on the same side of the brain” is an extremely weird strategy but I can see how it helps with binocular vision.

Both left sides of the visual field go one way and both right sides go the other. So what I said earlier about left brain right eye was completely wrong.

> Many people were taught they had a “learning style” at school, the idea that some people are better at retaining information orally, visually, or by listening. Students who revised with their assessed “learning styles” didn’t do any better in their end of year exams than others.
>>I like that analysis, but my learning style is “three way input”, typically hear, see and write the information at the same time.

not to be forgetting the feedback inputs from actualizing (which includes inhibiting), and given every brain has a unique structure, then everyone has a learning style, as sure as there is an I.

I only caution against a negative (unabstracted) generalization to do with learning style because lifestyler has become a nasty normative term (swearword) and I can see learning style being lent to the same thing.

transition said:

> Many people were taught they had a “learning style” at school, the idea that some people are better at retaining information orally, visually, or by listening. Students who revised with their assessed “learning styles” didn’t do any better in their end of year exams than others.
>>I like that analysis, but my learning style is “three way input”, typically hear, see and write the information at the same time.

not to be forgetting the feedback inputs from actualizing (which includes inhibiting), and given every brain has a unique structure, then everyone has a learning style, as sure as there is an I.

I only caution against a negative (unabstracted) generalization to do with learning style because lifestyler has become a nasty normative term (swearword) and I can see learning style being lent to the same thing.

in other words its possible to be hostile toward individual style, and hence hostile toward individual, and there’s plenty of that, in this apparently liberated modern world. Like the idea of plasticity of brain can substitute for structure’s unimportant, from this you could take something like Durkheim’s idea and make it part of a social philosophy of equality. Minds are merely the indeterminate material the social factor molds and transforms, to paraphrase.

mass media likes a lot of indeterminate material

> 7. Drinking alcohol kills your brain cells

certainly overconsumption lends to chemical insult, and is a dysruptor of various things

> 10. Research in the 1950s found that if students at the University of California at Irvine listened to 10 minutes of a Mozart sonata before taking an IQ test, they improved their scores by 8 points – and it was known as the “Mozart effect.”

saw this in NS maybe decade back, the effect only happened with mozart, as recall.