Somewhere along the way you sorted your child into a type. She is the creative one, the dreamer who fills the margins of every worksheet with drawings. He is the logical one, the kid who lines up his cars by size before he will play with them. You did not decide this in a single moment. A grandparent said it, a teacher wrote a version of it on a report, and eventually your child started saying it about themselves: “I am not a math person.” So you lean into the strength and quietly steer around the rest, because that feels like the kind thing to do. Here is what an analysis of 1,011 brain scans found when researchers went looking for the “left-brained” and “right-brained” people everyone talks about: no such thing, in not one of them.
Common questions from parents
Is my child left-brained or right-brained?
Does this mean the two halves of the brain are the same?
My child truly struggles with math. Doesn’t that prove they are a creative type, not a logical one?
How do I know when my child’s struggle needs more than encouragement?
Researchers scanned 1,011 brains looking for left-brained and right-brained people. They found none. Your child is not one type of thinker, and both logic and creativity are buildable.
What the Infographic Actually Shows
The graphic sets up the popular story and then takes it apart. On one side sit the two claims you have heard your whole life. On the other sits what brain imaging found when it tested them head on. Here is the image decoded into plain language:
- The myth, in two halves: the “logical” left brain is supposed to own reason, math, and analysis, while the “creative” right brain owns art, intuition, and imagination. The graphic stamps both claims debunked.
- Why the story sticks: these tidy labels spread through popular culture and a misreading of early split-brain research, long after the science had moved on.
- 1,011 brain scans, zero evidence: an analysis of 1,011 brains across roughly 7,000 regions turned up no sign that individuals run on a dominant hemisphere.
- One interconnected system: the brain is not strictly left or right. It is a dense network of regions working together on almost every task.
- Built to change: through neuroplasticity, the brain rewires and adapts across a person’s whole life, which is why a current strength is a starting point and not a ceiling.
- The takeaway: focus on the whole brain. Skills in both logic and creativity are developed, not handed out by a dominant side.
The moment you decide your child is one kind of thinker, you start handing them fewer chances to become the other. The scans say they were never only one kind.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
What 1,011 Brain Scans Actually Found
The study behind that headline came out of the University of Utah in 2013, led by Jared Nielsen and Jeff Anderson and published in the journal PLOS ONE. Researchers scanned the resting brains of 1,011 people between the ages of 7 and 29 and mapped activity across roughly 7,000 regions. They looked specifically for the pattern the myth predicts: people whose left-brain network or right-brain network runs hotter overall. They did not find it. Every brain used both sides, all the time.
This does not mean the two halves are identical. Lateralization is real. For most people, language leans left, and a handful of spatial, face, and tone-of-voice jobs lean right. The error in the myth is the leap from “some tasks lean one way” to “a person is one way.” A thick bundle of roughly 200 million fibers, the corpus callosum, ties the halves together so they trade information constantly. Your child is not running on half a brain. No one is, and the same imaging that retired the left-or-right brain-side label keeps confirming it.
Key takeaways
- No dominant side: imaging of 1,011 brains found no left-brained or right-brained individuals, so the type your child was sorted into does not exist in the wiring.
- Both are buildable: logic and creativity grow with practice because the brain keeps rewiring, which means a current weakness is a starting point, not a verdict.
- Labels become forecasts: calling a child "the creative one" or "not a numbers kid" quietly decides which doors stay open, long before the child gets to choose.
Why a Brain-Type Label Quietly Closes Doors
Here is the part that matters for your child. A label like “not a math brain” rarely stops at description. It becomes a forecast. The child is offered fewer math challenges, praised more for art, and slowly learns that the door to one whole domain belongs to other kids. None of that came from the child’s wiring. It came from a story about the wiring that the science retired years ago, and it lands hardest on kids who get quietly counted out of a subject before they have had a fair run at it, the way bright girls so often get steered away from STEM by age six.
We have seen this exact pattern before. Researchers showed that matching teaching to a child’s “learning style” does not improve learning back in 2008, and confirmed it again since. A review of educators across 18 countries in 2020 found nearly nine in ten still teach to styles anyway. The science is not the problem. The system that is supposed to carry it to your kitchen table runs years behind, which is the same reason a debunked brain-side idea is still repackaged as personalized learning today.
The hopeful flip side is the takeaway the graphic lands on. Because the brain keeps rewiring with use, logic and creativity are both buildable skills, not fixed allotments. The child who “is not a numbers kid” is most often a child who has had less practice and less belief, not less hardware. Offer the practice, protect the belief, and the so-called weaker side grows. A growth mindset about which parts of the brain are open is not wishful thinking here. It matches what the scans show.
“Adapted from Nielsen, Anderson and colleagues, University of Utah, 2013: across 1,011 brains and roughly 7,000 regions, no individual showed a dominant left or right network. People are not left-brained or right-brained. They are whole-brained.”
A child is not running on half a brain. No one is. So stop protecting them from the half you were told they did not get.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
You did not invent the idea that your child is one kind of thinker. A culture that loves tidy boxes handed it to you, and it sounded almost like a compliment. The trouble is that a living, rewiring brain does not read its own label, and the child who keeps hearing “that is not your side” starts believing the door is bolted shut. You are the one who keeps it open. Nobody will ever advocate for your child as hard as you will, and that is exactly why the brain-type story stops at your kitchen table.
If you want to grow the so-called weaker side on purpose, our Brain Bloom program trains the attention, working memory, and flexible thinking that both logic and creativity stand on. And because focus, reading, and confidence are wired together rather than parceled out by hemisphere, All Access gives you every Learning Success course and screener in one place, so you are building the whole child instead of one favored half.
See what All Access gives your child
Is your child struggling in school?
Get your free personalized learning roadmap
You describe what you see at home. We turn it into a plan you start this week.
- Answer 5 short questionnaires about what you already notice, 30–45 minutes at your own kitchen table
- Your child sits no test and gets no score: nothing to schedule, nothing for them to dread
- You do the answering, the AI does the writing, and a person reviews it before it reaches you
- Access all 40+ courses instantly: reading, math, focus, processing and more, with new ones added regularly
Why we use AI, plainly: it writes from a knowledge base our team maintains and audits. We work through it line by line and pull anything the evidence stops supporting. The roadmap you get on Tuesday reflects what we corrected on Monday, and a human still reads it before you do.
Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.
Your answers stay yours. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not hand identifiable assessment data to outside AI companies to train their models.
A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too. That is the only route to those supports.
References
- Nielsen, J. A., Zielinski, B. A., Ferguson, M. A., Lainhart, J. E., & Anderson, J. S. (2013). An evaluation of the left-brain vs. right-brain hypothesis with resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging. PLOS ONE. University of Utah.
- Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
- Newton, P. M., & Salvi, A. (2020). How common is belief in the learning styles neuromyth, and does it matter? A pragmatic systematic review. Frontiers in Education.
