Your Better Half:Hemisphere Specialization of Language

Your Better Half:Hemisphere Specialization of Language

You probably write with a particular hand, kick a ball with a particular foot, peer through a telescope with a particular eye, and raise the telephone receiver to a particular ear.

It is thought that this has to do more with your brain and "neurological wiring" than habit. But what does this mean?

You have probably heard of hemispheric lateralization- hemispheric referring to the division of the brain into left and right halves, and lateralization describing the brain's tendency to make the two halves specialize in controlling different functions (1). Furthermore, the right side of your body is controlled by your left brain while the left side of your body is controlled by your right side of the brain. The connection between the hemispheres is the corpus callosum, a thick band of nerves. One of the most common beliefs is that the left hemisphere controls symbolic processing and rational thinking whereas the right hemisphere is more artistic, intuitive and creative (2). Many myths have emerged from this idea (5). We often hear students complain about being "right-brained in a left brained world" and others claiming that they do not perform well in a particular subject because they are either right-brained or left-brained. I remember being told that you should listen to lectures with your "dominant" side of my brain. In fact the idea has become so infused in today's society that we see several prevalent views of the left brain/right brain theory. A couple years back there was a car advertisement for Saab, which claimed the car as a "car for the left side of your brain." With so many simplified and popularized views of brain lateralization the task of sorting the fantasy from reality is daunting and not so easy. The big question remains standing- does hemispheric asymmetries exist and if so to what extent can we categorize functions as right or left brain, looking specifically at language?

At first glance the human brain appears symmetrical, leading one to wonder how it is that behavioral asymmetries emerge from biological identical hemispheres. Yet there are many cognitive and behavioral asymmetries in humans documented, many of which can be attributed to one hemisphere of the brain or the other (1) (5).

Yet before we explore hemisphere specialization it is interesting to note that the left and right hemisphere have shown to function independently.