The logical/creative dichotomy is bullshit based on fake science.
In reality the left brain (dominant for most people) prefers sequential, step-by-step thinking, while the right brain prefers simultaneous and spatial thinking.
Math professionals are actually biased towards right brain people. (It's hard to get anywhere in real math using step-by-step algorithms.)
>> In reality the left brain (dominant for most people) prefers sequential, step-by-step thinking, while the right brain prefers simultaneous and spatial thinking.
I've never seen anyone make such a direct contradiction so clearly ;-) You define left-brain thinking the same way the "bullshit" does, and then you define the right brain in a way that reflects creativity - at least to me.
But can it really be simultaneous (at the same time)? I mean there's still a "micro sequence" involved. it seems that the real skill here is context switching, pattern recognition and applying patterns to different contexts.
When I have to think about something hard I try to do it without words in my mind. I believe this makes it easier for the brain to subconsciously work on those, without having to "translate" it first.
However I still use "pictures" in my mind. I wonder if it's possible to actively think about something without using things linked to our physical senses (hearing, seeing, touch,..).
Sounds like intuition based on experience, where a new situation is compared against your experience, with the brain filling in the gaps.
>When I have to think about something hard I try to do it without words in my mind.
Hard in the sense of difficult to solve and unfamiliar, or in the sense of the level of focus or concentration?
For example, I know a heavily right-brained person, and when he reads a book, instead of the intuitive sequential pattern (even page-odd page-even-odd-even-odd) he may read it in a zig-zag (even-even-odd-odd-even-even).
The analogy is synchronous processing (left brain) vs multithreaded (right brain).
On the other hand, right-brained people seem to have problems doing 'obvious' things like finishing chores in order, telling left from right or positioning something on a blank page.
1: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/right-brainleft-brain-ri...
Yes, there really is, but the way it's described in American media is a load of crap. I don't think anybody published actual real science about this in English.
It wasn't clear if that was a shift in thinking or just improving ones skills at a particular way of thinking. In other words, no evidence of any loss just a shift in score on a right/left test. The other notable thing he said is that the right brained people who complete an engineering degree were rather likely to spend some time working in the field and then just change to something completely different.
I remember this well because I tested as a dominant right-brain thinker and have always had this odd feeling that I might want to just stop and do something completely different. Fortunately I've been able to find ways to use creativity in engineering :-)