Dancer

Does the above image of a spinning dancer (found via and article in Perth Now) demonstrate which side of your brain is the more dominant? According to the article most people will see this dancer moving counter-clockwise because they apparently use more of the left side of their brain and tend to be more logical and practical. People who see the dancer moving clockwise (like me) are right brain dominant and tend to be more risk taking and imaginative. Can it be true?

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
forms strategies
practical
safe		 RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
“big picture” oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can “get it” (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking

From Viewzone:

Experiments show that most children rank highly creative (right brain) before entering school. Because our educational systems place a higher value on left brain skills such as mathematics, logic and language than it does on drawing or using our imagination, only ten percent of these same children will rank highly creative by age 7. By the time we are adults, high creativity remains in only 2 percent of the population.

Below is another interesting example of how the left and right brain works together and separately. The below images are made by taking each half of the face and pasting them together. All the portraits on the left are made by pasting a mirror image of the right side of the face to the normal right side of the face. The image in the middle is the normal portrait and the image on the right is the opposite reflection using just the left side of the face.

 

What’s really happening in the image of the dancer is really just a matter of your perceptual and cognitive flexibility. The image contains just 34 frames running in a constant loop but since the two-dimensional image does not contain enough three-dimensional information to tell the brain which way she is spinning, your brain fills the rest in, as brains are apt to do with optical illusions. In this case the brain can do it one of two ways but which side of your brain is more dominant does not really have a bearing on which way she spins. (credit and thanks to the New Scientist)

It is important to note that — while functions of the brain are indeed lateralized — these lateralizations are trends and do not apply to every person in every case. Short of having undergone a hemispherectomy (the removal of an entire cerebral hemisphere) there are no “left-brained only” or “right-brained only” people.

A brainThe BBC has some more interesting brain tests that you can take if you want to play around with these ideas more. Own a Nintendo DS? Then you can look forward to this new game. Finally, if you like 3D illusions give this article a try.

Getting back to the spinning dancer above; those of you who are still trying to determine if she is naked or not are probably thinking with your “other brain“.

UPDATE: I came across this video via Cognitive Daily on Science Blogs (real scientists, great bloggers) which explains what happens when the corpus callosum is cut in a human patient leaving the left and right brains no longer able to communicate through that pathway. Hopefully this will put an end to those who think this post is a hoax and is nothing but “phony science”.



Popularity: 100% [?]