Ready for the science? Good.  These three insights can help you understand how and when your hemispheres are positioned to support your goals:

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1. Your right brain holds the key to neuroplastic progress

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Your brain is built for efficiency. It needs both default processes (to use day-to-day) and emerging processes for encountering and integrating new information. Here's how your brain achieves both:

 

For efficient default operations, your brain maintains distinct maps, or networks, about its chief priorities and processes. These networks shape everything from your thoughts and beliefs to the nature of your lived experiences. The two largest networks—your Default Mode Network (DMN) and Salient Network (SN)—contain your brain's default priorities and are highly lateralized left (1). Your left brain stays fast and efficient by prioritizing networking in these networks (2).

 

To ensure awareness and integration of new and emerging information, your right brain works with a broader scope of reference. It is constantly working to access and update global networks. To ensure your decisions have access to the best possible scope of insight, your brain's Central Executive Network (CEN) is mostly lateralized right(1). In cases where your right brain sees or senses fresh information that could be important for future reference, the right hemisphere comes alive with robust networking across the CEN, SN, and DMN. (1) The more meaning these fresh insights have to perceptions of safety and threats, the more integrated they will become as default insights, to speed future retrieval. 

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Ask yourself: What if we could evolve our default and salient networks by minding safety cues in order to harness our right brain's bias for emergence and integration?

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References:

(1) Causal Interactions between Froto-Parietal Central Executive and Default Mode Networks in Humans (via PubMed)

(2) Two Distinct Forms of Functional Lateralization in the Human Brain (via PNAS)

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2. Your right brain is a powerhouse for imagination and solutions

 

Now that we've covered how the right brain integrates new information for neuroplastic progress, let’s explore its role in a critical function for solutions: imagination and futurism.​

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To navigate our futures effectively, we need capacity to imagine scenarios and simulate outcomes, and reference these simulated experiences later on. These imagined and simulated scenarios are made possible by our brain's superpower for gestalt insights: the right brain. (Remember what we just learned about how involved this hemisphere is in whole-brain networking dynamics?)

 

Research consistently demonstrates that imagination—and specifically mental imagery—is highly lateralized right (3)(4)(5)(6), We know this because, when measuring brain activity during imagination and future thinking, structures in the right cortex and right hippocampus are regularly shown to have stronger networking dynamics than the left (3). The right brain is so essential to imagination that damage to this hemisphere correlates with difficulties in generating detailed future simulations (3). 

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Notice: Are you beginning to understand why a picture is worth a thousand words when it comes to the brain's ability to "see" what's important?

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References:

(3) The Hippocampus and Imagining the Future: Where Do We Stand? (via PubMed)

(4) The Right Hemisphere Maintains Solution-Related Activation for Yet-To-Be-Solved Problems (via PubMed)

(5) Hemispheric Asymmetry in Visual Mental Imagery (via PubMed)

(6) Lateralization of Brain Activation to Imagination... (via JCAT) 

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3.  Your left brain is your powerhouse for narratives

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For all the myths that abound about left and right brain function, neuroscientists do see two truths in the research. While our right brain excels at processing imagery—whether in our mind's eye or around us (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)—our left hemisphere contributes more to language and speech (2)(7)(8).  In  groundbreaking new research from 2022, the mechanism for accomplishing this is revealed: input from the right brain is actively inhibited by the corpus callosum while the left hemisphere is constructing speech (8).  That's an incredibly valuable insight that validates the use of visualization tools in situations where we need clarity with the benefit of ongoing right-brain input. 

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Note: Research into right-brain inhibition during speech processing is poised to offer increasingly valuable insight, so we'll stay on top of developments over the years.

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References:

(1) Causal Interactions between Froto-Parietal Central Executive and Default Mode Networks in Humans (via PubMed)

(2) Two Distinct Forms of Functional Lateralization in the Human Brain (via PNAS)

(3) The Hippocampus and Imagining the Future: Where Do We Stand? (via PubMed)

(4) The Right Hemisphere Maintains Solution-Related Activation for Yet-To-Be-Solved Problems (via PubMed)

(5) Hemispheric Asymmetry in Visual Mental Imagery (via PubMed)

(6) Lateralization of Brain Activation to Imagination... (via JCAT) 

(7) An Evaluation of The Left Brain vs RIght Brain Hypothesis (via PLOS)

(8) Corpus Callosum Found to Switch off Right Hemisphere During Speech (via Neuroscience News)

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