Right-brain Dominance.

I took a quiz online last night to test which side of my brain is dominant. The test, called a Hemispheric Dominance Inventory Test, is located here if you wish to take it yourself.

According to this quiz the right side of my brain is dominant. This confirmed my suspicion. Of 18 questions I answered 11 questions right-brain, 7 questions left-brain.

In the Minority.

Cursory research on statistics of left-brain right-brain dominance shows the majority of people are left-brain dominant (we’re talking upwards of 98% of the population). Assuming that’s the case, the fact that I am right-brain dominant, combined with these statistics would be something I could add to the list of things that begin to explain why people consistently insist I am special.

This brings up a lot of questions. For instance, my father and I share many quirky behaviors. He’s a difficult and complex person, a charming person with a magnetic personality. At one time he was creative, expressive, and extremely athletic. He’s also left-handed. I’m curious to find out if he is right-brain dominant as well. My uncle, who is someone I look up to for many different reasons, is quoted as having said that my father can often be found doing the exact opposite thing he’s supposed to do, and this is apparent in the difficult part of my father’s personality and behavior. I know what my uncle’s saying when he makes this assertion about my father (out of love I might add in case that’s not obvious). And I don’t just see it in my father, but I also know it because I catch myself doing the same kind of backwards thinking, and frankly it scares the shit out of me. My intuition suggests the two – right-brain dominance and this “backwards” thinking are related. I’ll keep this in mind as I explore myself and what science, collective wisdom, and my intuition have to offer.

Left-brain Dominance Bias.

“The main theme to emerge… is that there appear to be two modes of thinking, verbal and nonverbal, represented rather separately in left and right hemispheres respectively and that our education system, as well as science in general, tends to neglect the nonverbal form of intellect. What it comes down to is that modern society discriminates against the right hemisphere.“ ~ Roger Sperry (1973)

As the quote above states, the world we live in is left-brain dominance biased. I can attest to this. And it’s sad and frustrating in a lot of ways. People seem to enjoy my contribution to their lives – entertainment, insight, creativity – etc., but most if not all fail to contribute at the end of the day when it comes to helping me with the parts of day-to-day life that the built in left-brain dominance bias weighs against. (I believe there may be a connection between this phenomenon and the arc of my father’s story.)

I suppose I’m phasing out of the time in my life where sitting around and feeling dissed by this fact is paying off and that – bias or no bias – I’ll still need to do my best to train myself to take care of myself. Truth be told I’m not sure how much of my right-brain dominance is doing to undermine my success, so pointing to it now as down-right cause for my troubles seems silly at best. But maybe I’m not far off. I’ll keep looking into it.

As odd as it may seem, I think solving algebra and logic problems are part and parcel of training my brain to shift to the left. I just went to the used bookstore at the mall tonight and picked up a college algebra text book, and a book on mathematical thinking. I’m enthused about training my brain to do something that I had trouble with in school (mostly because I got lost by not paying attention in class I suppose). I just shudder to think of losing some of my mad-genius edge. That would suck.

References

• http://www.viewzone.com/bicam.html
• http://www.web-us.com/BRAIN/LRBrain.html
• http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=656