The Big Similarities & Quirky Differences between Our Left and Right Brains

While the brain may initially seem like a mass of squishy tissue that can be easily taken apart, it holds the ability to control the body and send out thousands of impulses at once at speeds up to 250 mph. While it was originally thought that humans were uniquely right- or left-brained, but it has more recently been discovered that more animals are also this way, such as parrots, toads, zebra fish, and bees. Lesley Rogers, a biologist at the University of New England in Australia, performed an experiment on chicks while they were still on the eggs. Since most chick embryos have their right eye facing the egg wall, Rogers found if someone shines a light on the egg for an amount of time, the chick will have a more lateralized brain than a chick on whom no light was shone. Other similar experiments were performed on humans and songbirds which, for the sake of time and space, I will not mention here. However, it was discovered that: it is likely while one hemisphere is busy performing a task, the other side relaxes; the front of the brain is usually less synchronized than the back; and the left side deciphers what words and sounds mean, and the right side recognizes the emotion and tone of the words.
While all this seems like it will work out perfectly for ever and ever, amen, there are failures as are always present in our world. There are disorders in which the two hemispheres of the brain are not in sync with each other, such as in dyslexia or Alzheimer's. Nevertheless, it is possible to remove one side and be able to survive with only the other (a lot of physical therapy is needed, no doubt).

My Response
I found this article intriguing because I know the thoughts about how right vs. left brained people think, and I knew there were some differences between the thought patterns of men and women, but beyond this was unknown territory. I learned while the brain is in some ways symmetrical, there are distinct differences not only between each hemisphere but between the front and back as well.