• Question: Is it true we use one side of our brain more than the other?

    Asked by anon-234568 to Phill, Liam, Kohinoor, Karolina, Jack, Debbie on 18 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Debbie Kinsey

      Debbie Kinsey answered on 18 Nov 2019:

      Not really – we never only use one side of our brains at a time as the different parts all work together. There was some research that did scans of people’s brains and they found there was no difference in how active the two sides were, which suggests people use both sides of the brain about the same.

    • Photo: Jack Joyce

      Jack Joyce answered on 18 Nov 2019:

      Nope! that’s a bit of a myth that we had separate sides of the brain. It’s a lot more complex than having two distinct parts — we use different parts of the brain when doing different things, and similarly multiple parts of the brain can be processing information whilst we’re doing one thing!

      For instance: we process the sounds of words, meanings and context in one area — we create and express language in another — and we understand those words, meanings and concepts in another! so they all do different things but without them all working together then we couldn’t have language.

      I’m not totally qualified to answer this though, and maybe another psychologist can provide a more detailed answer!

    • Photo: Liam Wignall

      Liam Wignall answered on 19 Nov 2019:

      What Jack and Debbie said. Interestingly, there is a university building in Newcastle that is made to look like a brain – they have different subjects taught on either side!

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