Are you Right or Left Brained?

 

It's a bit of a trick question as people are very rarely just left brained or just right brained, unless they have some damage to the hemispheres. It's popularly believed that the right brain is used when you are being more creative or recalling rote learned things like tables and rhymes, while the left brain is for more logical activities such as adding up figures and so on.

Although there is a lot of truth in that, it's very simplistic. Brain activity actually moves from one side to the other depending on what you are doing. When I am doing my SEO copywriting for example, I probably use the left and right sides of my brain throughout the writing.  I may be working on statistics or key word research (very left brained) but then stop and imagine links between words and phrases 'in my mind's eye' (very right brained).

Anyway, all this is leading up to the intriguing spinning dancer puzzle that is doing the rounds on the Internet. I immediately saw it spinning clockwise, indicating a preference for using the right brain. But when I looked at it from the corner of my eye while reading some text on the page it changed direction.

Of course there is a logical explanation, which is that the image is an optical illusion known as a ‘reversible’ and that something in our visual system ‘clicks in and switches the direction of the image. Sometimes I hate logical explanations, don’t you?

Whatever... it's good fun.

Comments

[Fiona]

Hi Jane

I must admit I love this illusion! And right brain is definitely where I want to be a lot of the time - just need to kick my left brain out of the way.

[Jane Steen]

Hilarious. If I look at her straight on she spins clockwise; if I look at her from the corner of either eye she sways her leg backward & forward without spinning. She also appears to be jumping up and down at the same time. So I am a rightbrained person (which is a HUGE surprise) with weirdness at the edges of my brain (which is not a surprise).

Ew, just looked again and now I'm getting nauseous.