LEFT brain, logical and intellectual. Right brain, emotional and creative. While many suspect self-help therapies stem from this simplification, many studies, especially of brain injuries, confirm that the two sides of the brain do have different processing styles.
The left brain excels at analytical, more focused tasks, while the right brain does better at tasks that involve the "bigger picture", such as understanding metaphors and recognising faces. So what accounts for these differences?
A team led by Isao Ito of Kyushu University in Fukoka, Japan, has just added an intriguing piece to the puzzle. They have discovered that in mice one kind of receptor on nerve cells is distributed differently on the right and left sides of the hippocampus, a region deep in the brain that is key to creating memories and learning (
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