1. The number of people dominated by the right brain is equal to that dominated by the left brain. You can find out which brain you are dominated by through a simple test. A: We all know that the left brain controls the second half of the body and the right brain controls the left half of the body. Most people in the world are used to using their right hand, that is, right-handed. Left-handers account for about 10% of the total population. But not all left-handers are dominated by the right brain. According to a statistical study in the United States, 95% of right-handers are left-brained, while less than 20% of left-handers are right-brained (A). Don't believe those simple pictures or quizzes on various topics. They can't tell whether a person has a left brain or a right brain. Only through complex brain scanning experiments can we determine which brain is dominant.

Einstein is left-handed. He is smarter than ordinary people because his right brain is extremely developed. A: There is no data to show that Einstein is left-handed. On the contrary, many photos prove that he holds a pen and writes with his right hand, indicating that he is actually more likely to be right-handed. There are also rumors that Einstein's right brain is super developed, which led to his genius achievement. From 65438 to 0999, three American scientists published a paper on Einstein's brain slices in the famous medical journal The Lancet. One of their important findings is that Einstein's parietal lobe is more symmetrical than ordinary people, mainly because his left parietal lobe is larger than ordinary people, and its size and shape are similar to that of the right parietal lobe (B). The parietal lobe is in charge of visual spatial cognition, mathematical ability and motor imagination, which is probably the main reason why Einstein has extraordinary logical thinking and spatial cognition ability. This shows that the difference between Einstein and ordinary people is mainly the left brain, not the rumored right brain.

3. The information stored in the right brain is 654.38+ million times that of the left brain. The left brain and the right brain are basically the same in shape and structure, and the number of nerve cells and the number of synaptic contacts are at least the same in order of magnitude. There is no scientific experiment that shows that there is a huge difference in information storage function between the right brain and the left brain. The statement that "the information stored in the right brain is 654.38+ million times that of the left brain" can basically be said to be pure nonsense.

4. It is widely spread that the left brain is in charge of language logic and the right brain is in charge of emotional art and creativity, which can actually be called one of the three major misunderstandings in understanding brain science. (The other two misunderstandings are "the utilization rate of human brain is less than one tenth" and "brain cells can't regenerate". The truth is that "the utilization rate of the human brain is already very high, close to saturation" and "some brain cells have the ability to regenerate". )

This rumor may come from the "split brain" experiment in the 1960s. At that time, when treating some epilepsy patients, the corpus callosum connecting the left and right brains was separated, which led to the interruption of information exchange between the left and right brains of patients. Later, these patients did some experiments, and through the experimental results, people caused the conjecture that the left and right brain functions were different. At the beginning of this century, through the experiment of scanning the human brain with magnetic resonance scanner, it was found that the functional division of the left and right brains was not strictly unified. It is found that in fact, when completing tasks such as language and logical thinking, both the left and right brains will participate, with the left brain paying more attention to details and the right brain paying more attention to the overall situation (C). Therefore, in fact, the difference between the left and right brains is the difference in the way of dealing with problems, not the difference in function. In addition, last year's Summary of Creativity (D), which summarized 63 academic articles and 72 experiments, clearly pointed out that there is no evidence that creativity has any special relationship with the right brain.

5. Infants and young children are the critical period for the development of the right brain. Only one of these judgments is correct. Infant is the fastest period of brain development, not only the best period of right brain development, but also the best period of left brain development. Good training is not only to develop the half brain, but also to mobilize the left and right brains to complete it together. Only in this way can we give full play to the full potential of the whole brain. In 2009, a research team in the United States found that testers who usually like to use both hands scored much higher on some creative test questions than testers who only like to operate with one hand. And if those one-handed experimenters move their eyes from side to side for 30 seconds in parallel before doing some creative problems, their creativity will be greatly increased (E). Researchers speculate that when communication between the left and right brains increases, people's ability to solve problems also increases. Are all parents ready to let their babies do more "sports" by moving their eyes left and right after hearing the above research findings? Unfortunately, the researchers found that although this method of enhancing creativity is very simple and effective, the increase of creativity is only temporary, that is, 90 minutes has expired, so it cannot be used as a reliable training method. In order to improve the communication between the left and right brains, children should be allowed to do more activities of the left and right brains at the same time, so that the communication between the left and right brains can become a habit, such as doing more exercises of simultaneous transfer of the left and right sides, such as learning a musical instrument played with both hands, such as paying attention to details and taking care of the overall situation when telling stories, so as to effectively mobilize the whole brain and develop it reasonably.

The potential of the right brain is not as great as the legend, and the development of the right brain is not much more important than the left brain. A person's thinking, doing things, judging, thinking and language use are all coordinated with the left and right brains. The key is that the left and right brains need to develop in a coordinated and balanced way. Parents should also carefully examine the basic ideas and scientific basis when choosing the "early education" method, and don't be confused by the gorgeous coat.

Published in "Fashion Parenting", with some amendments.

reference data

A. Taylor, Insep and Taylor, M. Martin (1990) Psycholinguistics: Learning and Using Language. Page 362

B. Sandra F. Witson, Debra L. Kigar, thomas harvey, Albert Einstein's Extraordinary Brain, The Lancet, Volume 353, 2 149-2 153, 1999.

C. Fink, Halligan, Marshall, Fries, Frakowiak & Dolan, where does visual attention choose forests and trees in the brain? Nature 382,626-628 (15 Aug 1996)

D. Review on EEG, event-related potentials and neuroimaging of creativity and insight. Psychological bull. 20 10 Sep； 136(5):822-48

E.Shobe ER, Ross NM & amp； Flacky (2009). Effects of dexterity and bilateral eye movements on creativity. Brain and Cognition, 7 1 (3), 204- 14 This article comes from QQ mail subscription column-Science Squirrel Club.