Which bit of your brain do you need to be creative? It turns out, all of it. Recent scientific findings are proving that the right brain label for creativity and the left brain label for logic are a huge oversimplification. And that creative acts need the whole package. So next time you doubt your creativity because you’ve been told you're a left brain thinker, think again. Or similarly if you’re super proud of your enlarged right lobe, it’s left brain day.
Right brain and left brain hemispheres have been discovered to work together in various different ways, from a complex mixture of the prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum, to a heavy left brain presence in verbal creativity. But one recent study out of Drexel’s University Creativity Research lab throws out a game-changing theory: professional creators are relying more on the left side of their brains.
Professional creators as left brain thinkers.
The study, published in the journal NeuroImage, recorded brain images of jazz musicians during improvisation sessions. The more experienced musicians were drawing heavily on well-learned left-hemisphere routines while the novices were relying more on their right brain. The study implies that when learning unfamiliar creative techniques people heavily rely on their right brain, but once they have developed experience their creativity draws more from their well-learned, left hemisphere routines. What does this mean for us?
Genius? Or just deeply ingrained skills?
According to this study, creative expertise becomes a subconscious act. Which could explain why creativity feels so hard to teach and why we reach for the more romantic explanations for talent (e.g natural born genius). When we think we’re witnessing genius, what we may actually be witnessing is skills so deeply ingrained that they by-pass the conscious brain. If this is the case we need to work harder to break down creative skills into conscious tools that people can learn.
Left = Quality? Right = Novelty?
Not surprisingly the improvisations from the expert jazz musicians were deemed to be of a higher quality than the novices. Perhaps the more accurate definition of left brain vs right brain strengths depends on the type of creativity you need? Left brain creativity = competence and quality. Right brain creativity = the novel and unfamiliar.
A window to lock in good habits?
This study also raises questions about when the switch from right brain novice to left brain expert happens? Novices are approaching the creative act under deliberate, conscious control and therefore are more receptive to coaching. Switching out of conscious control prematurely may cause you to lock in bad habits too early. Creating a life-time of poorly learned left brain routines. Ouch.
Non-binary creativity.
However we approach it, what becomes clear is like many things in life, there is more gray, and rainbow, between the binary concepts we love. Left and right are just two over simplistic labels that do little to serve us in our quest to be more creative.
Source: Frontiers in Psychology
Source: National Science Foundation