Day-to-Day Functions of the Hemispheres of the Brain

Harlan Archer

The human brain is split into two hemispheres. Each having specific and important jobs
to do. While it is not as simple as people once thought that the right side is creative and
emotional and the left is analytical and logical for the purposes of ease of explanation, that is
how they will be described.
The right hemisphere controls visual spatial attention and emotions. Throughout the day,
a person can see hundreds of things that their brain needs to process to allow them to function
correctly. This visual-spatial attention is controlled by the right hemisphere of a person's brain.
Visual-spatial attention allows someone to focus selectively on one thing and process
information, like when someone is looking into a crowd and trying to keep track of one person in
that crowd or when a hunter is trying to find an animal concealed by many other shapes and
objects made up of bushes, grass, and trees. A person's right hemisphere also processes faces;
this could be someone in a car, walking down a street, in a tv show or video, or pareidolia.
Pareidolia is the phenomenon where someone "sees" faces and animals in places and things
without faces or animals, like clouds or charcoal embers. The right hemisphere is also in charge
of processing the emotions a person feels throughout the day. According to the "Right Brain
Hypothesis." Out of 26 studies done for the right brain hypothesis, 25 supported the idea of right
hemisphere dominance when processing emotions.
The left hemisphere of a person's brain takes those faces and helps process whether or not
the face is attractive according to the person's preferences. The left hemisphere is also in charge
of oral and written language, number skills, and reasoning. Because of the left hemisphere we
can communicate our thoughts and ideas, take care of finances, and solve problems.
The crazy thing is that the left hemisphere controls the right half of a person's body while
the right hemisphere controls the left.According to Choosing words This causes between 95 and
99 percent of right-handed people to have a left dominant brain when speaking and writing, and
around 70 percent of left-handed people to have a left dominant brain when speaking and
writing.
Gainotti, G. (2012, January). Unconscious processing of emotions and the right hemisphere.
Science Direct. Retrieved March 3, 2023, from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393211005409

Gainotti, G. (2019, February 22). The role of the right hemisphere in emotional and behavioral
disorders of patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration: An updated review. Frontiers.
Retrieved April 3, 2023, from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2019.00055/full

G;, G. (n.d.). The role of the right hemisphere in emotional and behavioral disorders of patients
with frontotemporal lobar degeneration: An updated review. Frontiers in aging neuroscience.
Retrieved April 3, 2023, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30941030/

MediLexicon International. (n.d.). Left brain vs. right brain: Characteristics, functions, and
myths. Medical News Today. Retrieved April 3, 2023, from
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321037

Riès, S. K., Dronkers, N. F., & Knight, R. T. (2016, April). Choosing words: Left hemisphere,
right hemisphere, or both? perspective on the lateralization of word retrieval. Annals of the New
York Academy of Sciences. Retrieved April 3, 2023, from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4874870/

CogniFit. (2022, March 15). Left Brain, right brain: 9 ways our brain hemispheres work together.
CogniFit Blog: Brain Health News. Retrieved April 3, 2023, from
https://blog.cognifit.com/brain-hemispheres/