Imaginative side controls creativity and artistic endeavors

When psychology teacher Tony Carter

introduced left and right-brained information

to his second period class, it opened some of the

students eyes to things they never thought about

before.

For instance, Carter said that senior Luke Hicks

had an extreme dominant right brain.

“I didn’t know the difference between the

right and left brain before,” Hicks said. “I like to

draw a lot and do art things. I really don’t think things

through because right-brained people do things on im-

pulse; I wish I would. ”

Right brain is linked with creativity.

“I am very right-brained,” freshman Gabe Roybal said.

“I’m more creative than the average person.”

It is the right-brained person who is more open to new ideas, innovations and work schedules.

For example, in the Disney Channel program, A.N.T. Farm, Chyna is right-brained, while Olive is left-brained.

The right-brain is considered the center for creative and intuitive thinking. Studies show that individuals usually have a preference for one side of the brain which makes that side dominant.

Unfortunately, right-brained it also linked with many problems. According to gaia-health.com, creative people are more dishonest. In a recent study, researchers correlated creative thinkers with lower levels of honesty and humility. One study said that creativity directly causes dishonesty.

“That makes perfect sense,” senior Blue Franklin said. “When I was younger, I lied a lot. I could make up a story that made perfect sense.”

Left-brained people are also linked with fewer leadership skills because people not only see creative types are visionaries, but also as wild cards less likely to conform.

Many right-brained people are also left-handed. The American Psychological Association presented a study that showed that left-handed people had a better vocabulary and were more intelligent which led them to pursue more creative occupations. The left-handed population tends to get involved in  more music, art and writing.

“My favorite thing to do is sing,” said Franklin, who is left-handed and right-brained, “but when it comes to art, I’m no Picasso.”

Education aid Sonnet Landy is artistic, and she loves creating and doing things with arts and crafts.

“My best subjects are English and writing,” Landy said. “I love making things with my hands, but I am not better at math. It’s my worst subject.”

Landy said that although she is right-handed, she might have left-handed tendencies.

“My brother was left-handed and my mom would move everything to his right hand when he was little,” Landy said. “He would automatically switch it back.”

Landy said her husband is left-handed and her son is left-handed as well, so left-handedness runs in the family.

Unfortunately, creativity is also linked to promiscuity as well as mental illness. The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology said that “creative types are more likely to possess low levels of latent inhibition which is a person’s unconscious ability to filter out stimuli.”

More than 20 studies indicate more depression and mood disorders in creative types.

All of this creativity comes from the right-

brained person’s tendency toward contemplation.

“I like to think a lot. I like literature,” sophomore

Michelle Guevara said. “I’d rather be right-brained.

I like the way it feels to think with the right brain.”

Being right-brained could also be a problem in an orderly

world.

“I am more creative than logical,” senior Kylee Weeks said.

“Sometimes I wish I was left-brained so I could be better at

science.”

Science writer Carl Zimmer said in an article for Discover magazine that no matter how lateralized the brain gets, the two sides still work together.

“The pop psychology notion of a left-brain and a right brain doesn’t capture their intimate working relationship,” Zimmer said. “…The right hemisphere is more sensitive to the emotional features of language,

tuning in to the slow rhythms of speech that carry intonation and stress.”

This explains why right-brained people are more intuitive and can read emotions better. They also are better a expressing their emotions.

Carter explained that the right brain is more global-based on creativity, and students with headphones on all the time are more right-brained.

When Carter was a special education teacher, he was trained to recognize left and right-brained learners. He found that right-brained learners functioned better with dimmed lights or sitting on the floor listening to music.

Many people fall between the two hemispheres.

“There are people in the middle,” Carter said. “They are called flip-flops. They use both sides evenly.”

The University of Utah recently came out with a theory that the left-brained/ right-brained idea is a myth after they did an analysis over 1,000 brains where they found no evidence that people preferred the use of left or right brain. So believing you are

left or right-brained might make you feel more comfortable

with who you are, but it might not have any real basis in

fact.