Left-brained? or Right-brained?

 

Left-brained or Right-brained?

Few discoveries in contemporary neuroscience have had a greater spill-over effect into the educational community than the now-legendary “split-brain” (corpus calloscotomy) research of Roger Sperry for which he received the 1981 Nobel Prize in the category of Physiology or Medicine.

Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga began his early career in the field with Sperry, and subsequent made significant contributions to our understanding of how the two hemispheres of the brain communicate with one another (or fail to do so when surgically separated from one another).

Later, when these hemispheric interactions were translated into educationally appealing terminology, “left-brained and right-brained” seminars were advertised at nearly every educational conference. We saw educators, whose genuine motive was merely to be well-informed and effective in their classrooms, flock to professional development workshops on this topic.

While the notion of cortical specialization is an accurate representation of the inner workings of the brain, every healthy human brain is intricately interconnected with massive pathways stretching across the neural divide rendering the content of many of these seminars misleading at best. There are over 300 million nerve fibers crisscrossing from one hemisphere to the other.

We have unraveled more of the brain’s deep secrets over the past 5 years of research in neuroscience than during humankind's last 2,500 years on this planet. Now, one of the "unguarded secrets" is that we learn with a “whole brain” that craves and creates meaningful connections. The foundation of all learning lies in the one quadrillion connections among the neurons throughout the brain and in both of the two hemispheres. The corpus callosum sends as much as 4 billion bits of information between the two hemispheres each second.

My Brain Valentine

(a.k.a., "I’m in love with a corpus callosum who makes me whole")

Left-brained?

 

Right-brained?

Well, I use both of ‘em.

Because I have you,

My corpus callosum!