SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Evolutionary Origins of Your Right and Left Brain
from Scientific American
The left hemisphere of the human brain controls language, arguably our greatest mental attribute. It also controls the remarkable dexterity of the human right hand. The right hemisphere is dominant in the control of, among other things, our sense of how objects interrelate in space.
Forty years ago the broad scientific consensus held that, in addition to language, right-handedness and the specialization of just one side of the brain for processing spatial relations occur in humans alone. Other animals, it was thought, have no hemispheric specializations of any kind.
... In the past few decades, however, studies of many other animals have shown that their two brain hemispheres also have distinctive roles. Despite those findings, prevailing wisdom continues to hold that people are different.
Read more...
Click here to listen to podcasts of American Scientist Pizza Lunches, informal lectures where scientists present new research to non-scientists. Originally intended for science communicators in the Research Triangle Park region of North Carolina, the audio slideshows are now available to anyone online. New talks are posted periodically during the academic year.
Science in the Media
Newspapers:
Magazines and Web Sites:
The Science-Media Intersection:
Subscribe to Our Content!
Visit our RSS Feeds page to choose among 13 customized feeds, or create a free My AmSci account to request an email notice whenever a specified author, department or discipline appears online.