The Dominant Side of Your Brain

For decades scientists believed that we had one brain, but it was divided into two hemispheres, the right and the left. They thought that each side worked independently and had certain functions that the other does not possess. They know now that although there are two sides, they work together, although we all do tend to favor one side over the other and controls how we process information. Do you know your brain dominance?

The right side of your brain controls the left side of your body, and the left side of your brain controls the right side of your body. Approximately 10% of the population is left-handed, which means they use the right side of their brain more often. Those who are ambidextrous (relatively few people are truly ambidextrous) use both hands equally and have no brain dominance side.

The fact of the matter is, there are very few (if any) people who are completely right or left handed. The closest comparison would be Sheldon from the television show “The Big Bang Theory,” (right-brained) or Charlie on “Three and a Half Men” (left-brained). Even these two examples would not describe the extremes of dominance.

Unless we are born with brain damage, or sustain it from illness, stroke or injury, we use both sides of our brain at different times, and often both sides at the same time for the same function. For example: The left hemisphere of your brain is dominant for language skills, while the right hemisphere is used for spatial abilities, face recognition, visual imagery and music. You could be great at languages, but keep a messy house — or love to paint and sculpt, but also enjoy sitting down to a Sodoku puzzle. These activities require the use of both sides of your brain at the same time.

I have a friend who some would say is left-handed. She writes, eats and draws with her left hand, but throws a ball and holds a glass with her right hand. To confuse her tennis player friends — she has no backhand and uses both hands to play. Sometimes she even writes with her right hand. Is she left-handed, right-handed, ambidextrous, or a little of both? Some jokingly says she is confused, but she uses both sides of her brain and has simply learned to accommodate both hemispheres at the same time. In reality, according to a test she took on line (To find out which side of your brain is dominant, take the test for dominance here) her right side is stronger (testing 41% left brain to 59% right brain), so she would be classified as weak right brain dominant. (She didn’t exactly like this answer, since she liked being looked at as left-handed and in the 10% who were classified as different.)