Intuition, insight, and the right hemisphere: Emergence of higher sociocognitive functions (2010)
Simon M McCrea, University of British Columbia, Canada
Scope: one of the first comprehensive neuropsychological overviews in the literature on “intuition” and “insight” as inter-dependent higher-order cognitive and social constructs of the right hemisphere in neurologically normal human subjects. The neural networks associated with intuition and insight are reviewed. Case studies of anomalous subjects with ability–achievement discrepancies are summarized.
Conclusion: Considerable evidence points to right hemisphere superiority at: imagery, paradigmatic, simultaneous, global, coordinate, parallel, and holistic processing. The unique co-localization of cognitive functions within the right hemisphere might possibly lead to the development of anomalous functions, and the core anomalous functions “intuition” and “insight” are exceptional human abilities, which are predominately lateralized to the right hemisphere, and can account for elevated individual achievement in the context of average intellectual abilities, particularly in individuals with right hemisphere dominance for language.
Hemispheric specialization: Creativity revisited – A meta-analytic review of lateralization of creativity (2010)
Konstantin M. Mihov, Jacobs University Bremen; Markus Denzler & Jens Förster, University of Amsterdam
Scope: a meta‐analytic literature review to provide a systematic evaluation of the entire available retrievable literature investigating brain specialization and creativity, with a variety of neurophysiological methods that associate creative outcomes with either a predominant left or right hemispheric activation, to establish how creative thinking relates to relative hemispheric dominance.
Conclusion: The systematic meta-analytic review found that the literature covering various techniques for assessing lateral dominance supports the notion of right hemispheric superiority in creative thinking. Creativity is strongly associated with right hemispheric activation. Furthermore, the results from the moderator analysis suggest that global thinking style, context‐dependent thinking style and figural processes are significantly more characteristic to result in right hemisphere dominance than in left hemisphere dominance.
The right brain hemisphere is dominant in human infants (1997)
Catherine Chiron and Isabelle Jambaque et al, Neuropediatric Department, Hospital Saint Vincent de Paul and University Rene Descartes
Scope: study the development of functional brain asymmetry during childhood by changes in cerebral blood flow measured at rest using dynamic single photon emission computed tomography. A total of 39 subjects, reasonably representative of normal children (19 males and 20 females) were recruited for this study.
Conclusion: Between 1 and 3 years of age, the blood flow shows a right hemispheric predominance, mainly due to the activity in the posterior associative area. Asymmetry shifts to the left after 3 years. The subsequent time course of changes appear to follow the emergence of functions localized initially on the right, but later on the left hemisphere (i.e. visuospatial and later language abilities). These findings support the hypothesis that, in man, the right hemisphere develops its functions earlier than the left.