Our brain is one of the most complex organs in our body and also one of the most vital. For millennia, humans have done various tests, experiments and studies on the brain, both scientifically and psychologically, but we will never truly be able to understand everything about this complicated part of our body.

One of the most fascinating aspects about that I find about the brain is how it is made up of multiple parts that all work together, but at the same time are also all so different. I am not speaking of the parts of the brain like the cerebellum or the hippocampus, but rather the two hemispheres of our brain. We have a left hemisphere and right hemisphere and they have polarising functions. People often speak of left-brained and right-brained people, and how the different types have different strengths and weaknesses. For example, a person that is analytical and more maths and science orientated are dominantly left-brained, whereas dominantly right-brained people tend to possess more creativity and are more emotional. Even though a person could use one side of their brain more, this doesn’t mean that the other hemisphere is completely neglected. 

One of the first explanations of the functions of the brain I heard about was from my piano teacher. She was explaining to me how the ability to read music and play a musical instrument utilises both hemispheres of your brain. I was a bit confused at first because I knew that music needed creativity and expression, and so I thought that the right hemisphere of our brain would be more dominantly used in this case.  What I learnt is that both hemispheres are working simultaneously; the right side working on expressing the emotions of music and using creativity to create new music, and the left side is working on reading the notes on sheet music and duration of the notes and tempo of the piece. This information led me to realise how much multitasking playing a musical instrument actually takes and why it can be difficult to learn. I believed that it was an escape from the everyday tasks, but playing and learning music was actually taking up more brainpower than I expected.

My realisation about the hemispheres of the brain and music led me to do more research about what activities use both hemispheres of our brain. I came across various articles and essays debunking the theory of the hemispheres being dominantly used for analytics on one side and creativity on the other. It was argued that both hemispheres of our brains are utilised everyday and being labeled as a ‘dominantly right-brained’ or ‘dominantly left-brained’ person is inaccurate. This new information went out to say that our personalities do not directly correlate to our brain hemisphere functions and which side is more dominant because scientifically both sides are working together at all times. This idea about left and right brain domination was most likely theorised by a psychologist of some sort because it was a way to categorise people based on their personalities and strengths/weaknesses.

I still buy in to the theory about left and right brain domination because I think that the idea of each side having different functions would explain why some people would be better at maths and science and others that are able to create and make art. I do still think that there are a number of different tasks that require both hemispheres to work in conjunction with each other, but sometimes one side might be enough to manage. The brain is a powerful and complex organ, but we will never truly know everything about it which makes learning all the more wonderful.

By Nerissa Govender