Is There Such a Thing as Two Brains

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Is There Such a Thing as Two Brains?
The human brain has always been a mystery. For many years researchers and scientists have ventured into the daunting task of understanding how the brain works. Even though they have accomplished to unearth new ideas and theories there is still an overwhelming abyss of the unknown. There is one theory that stands out the most from all others known as the right brain-left brain theory which originated from the work of Roger W. Sperry and who was awarded with the Nobel Prize in 1981. Since then there have been scientific research that suggest that the brain for the most part works as a whole rather than independently divided by two hemispheres. With all of these new discoveries emerging everyday there are still many educators and scholars that believe in the right brain-left brain theory and have found ways to incorporate new teaching strategies focused around the idea of students being dominate by one or the other side of the brain. According to Webb (1983), schools and society are most concerned in understanding the brain and in this way try to improve man’s ability to learn, to think, to solve problems, and to create (p. 508).
Science has determined that the brain can be divided into two hemispheres and that the two hemispheres are connected by the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is a body of nerve fibers that serves as a communication bridge between the two hemispheres. If science has already determined that the two hemispheres do communicate with each other, why then do educators support the theory of a dominate side? For many years teachers in the classroom have noticed that each student learns differently and also tend to have strengths in certain subjects while weaknesses i...

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...etrieved December 21, 2013 from APA website http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2004/04/interhemispheric.aspx
Leesmann, L. (2012). Do you know if you’re right- or left-brained? It could help in school. Retrieved December 08, 2013 from Web address: http://blog.grantham.edu/blog/bid/128827/Do-You-Know-If-You-re-Right-or-Left-Brained-It-Could-Help-in-School
Nielsen, J., Zielinski, B., Ferguson, M., Lainhart, J., & Andereson, J. (2013). An evaluation of the left-brain vs. right-brain hypothesis with resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging. Plos One, 8(8), 1-11. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0071275.
Pritchard, A. (2008). Ways of learning: Learning theories and learning styles in the classroom. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis e-Library.
Webb, G. M. (1983). Left/right brains, teammates in learning. Exceptional Children, 49(6), 508-515.

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