Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8773000@N08/6194675843/
You have probably seen this image on the left before. You might even have taken a personality test that identify you as a “logical left brainer” or a “creative right brainer”. Well, throw all those out the window because science has found a breakthrough in finding the origin of imagination.
As one of the oldest scientific myths, people have identified themselves with the terms left-brained and right-brained with an assumption that some people use a particular side of brain more. Oh, you are logical and well-structured? You must be a left-brainer. Oh, you are creative and full of imagination? You must use your right brain a lot!
Through an extensive two year study, University of Utah researchers have completely busted this myth with identifying the specific networks in our brain that process lateralized functions. We define lateralization as one hemisphere of the brain being more specialized in certain mental functions than the other. Based on the scanning images of 1,011 people’s resting brain, researchers studied functional lateralization in thousands of brain regions. They found that no individuals use their left brain network nor right brain network more as default.
For more information, this following Youtube video summarizes it perfectly.
While these Utah scientists thoroughly proved that there is not left brain or right brain dominance in regards to creativity or logic, the origin of imagination is still unclear. The team who solved this mystery are the researchers from Dartmouth. They hooked the study participants up to fMRI and asked them to complete creativity related tasks, such as arranging shapes into complex patterns. The following is the fMRI image produced.
Image Source:
http://images.sciencedaily.com/2013/09/130916162003.jpg
A wide variety of neurons are activated to complete these tasks, but as you can see, the eleven highlighted regions of the brain distinctively made a clear “mental network” to generate imagination.
These eleven areas of the brain ARE the origin of imagination.
You may ask that why is imagination important ? Spongbob here proves the point.
Image Source:
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7090/7394675658_2a5d9b848f_n.jpg
References:
Researchers Debunk Myth of “Right-brain” and “Left-brain”Personality Traits
How and Where Imagination Occurs in Human Brains
-Nick Hsieh
