Brain Imbalance Explained: What Left Brain vs Right Brain Really Means

In this episode of the Neurotrition Podcast, we take a deeper look at what people really mean when they talk about being “left-brained” or “right-brained” and why that popular idea is often misunderstood. Instead of reducing the conversation to personality traits like “logical” versus “creative,” this episode reframes the issue as one of neurological dominance and imbalance—how well different parts of the brain are actually developing, communicating, and functioning together. The discussion makes the case that this imbalance can have real consequences for behavior, learning, emotional regulation, sensory processing, and overall health. 

The episode explains that in many cases, the issue is not that one hemisphere is “too strong,” but that the other side may be underdeveloped or not functioning the way it should. From there, the conversation explores how brain imbalance may arise through developmental timing differences, inflammation, trauma, neglect, retained primitive reflexes, lack of movement, or insufficient sensory input. These factors can create uneven patterns in how a person processes information, responds emotionally, coordinates movement, and interprets the world around them. 

A major focus of the episode is breaking down the different roles associated with each hemisphere. The right hemisphere is described as playing a major role in big-picture awareness, sensory integration, nonverbal communication, attachment, empathy, emotional depth, attention, and parasympathetic “rest and digest” function. The left hemisphere, by contrast, is framed as more involved in sequencing, language, detail orientation, motor activation, routine, explicit memory, goal-directed behavior, and sympathetic “fight or flight” activity. By laying out these functions clearly, the episode helps listeners understand why imbalances can show up in such varied ways across cognition, behavior, mood, and physical regulation. 

The episode also gives practical examples of how these patterns may appear in both children and adults. It connects hemisphere imbalance to symptoms and experiences often associated with ADHD, autism, OCD, tics, sensory integration disorder, language delays, inattentiveness, anxiety, social difficulties, overwhelm, low motivation, and disorganization. Rather than treating these only as isolated labels, the episode encourages listeners to think in terms of underlying brain patterns and developmental function.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome back to the Neurotrition Podcast, where we give you the tools to balance the brain, optimize the body, and redefine how to unlock human potential. Well, today on the show, we're gonna be talking about something that we have mentioned a lot in different episodes. We're gonna be talking about the left brain and the right brain and why balance matters between these two hemispheres. You've probably heard a lot of people say that, you know, I'm more of a left brain person or I'm more of a right brain person. And maybe you've actually heard that, you know, that whole left brain, right brain thing is actually a myth. Well, today we're gonna go into that, those issues, and try to instruct you on how important that balance between these two hemispheres and why this imbalance naturally exists to the impact of human survival.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

The Neurotrition Podcast is sponsored by North Florida Spinal Wellness and produced by Jumine Delmus Studios.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

So, one thing I like to talk about first is like this, what we're not talking about is personality. We're not talking about um people's experience and how that forms how they see the world and how their personality develops, even though how your brain wires can impact um those experiences and how you perceive your environment, your relationships, and your world. But what we also want to talk about is not only how this affects how you react emotionally, how you react neurologically, but also how it impacts your overall health. So, first, let's talk about where brain imbalance comes from and some of the science behind it. And one individual that I think does an excellent job is a psychiatrist named Ian McGillchris. He wrote a very interesting book called The Master and His Emissary. And in this book, he describes the right brain as the master, and the left brain is the servant. And another way to think about this is essentially the left brain is kind of just like your computer, okay? It just simply logically processes the information that it sees, and the right brain is going to provide context, it more sees the big picture and allows us to interpret this information. Think about a bird who sees a little, you know, worm on a twig, okay? That left brain of that bird is gonna say, I want that worm, and it's gonna go for it. However, the right brain at the same time is going to be looking out for predators, it's gonna be vigilant, it's gonna be looking for danger. And that's really important for overall survival. And we can even take this a step further into an evolutionary context. So when we think about ancient humans, or even if you think about when you've watched shows like uh The Walking Dead, uh, when we get to post-apocalyptic worlds, one of the most important things that humans need for survival is relationships. And the human brain, which is the most lateralized brain of all the animals, for us, our right brain develops first. And this is our ability to form social bonds and social relationships. And in the ancient world, uh, for humans, the worst thing that could happen to you is that you're alone, that you're not part of a group. It was critical for survival for people to be in groups. So for our brain, developing those social interactions and be able to form relationships is essential for survival. Now, there's a lot of things when we talk about in other episodes, we've talked about how imbalances and weaknesses in the right brain or left brain can create a lot of symptomatology, even be related to different neurodevelopmental disorders. Um the question becomes well, what stops, what inhibits the normal development of these two sides of the brain? And there could be lots of different things. There can be inflammation, there can be lack of movement. Um, so when we have lack of movement, we ended up with retained primitive reflexes, which we did a whole episode on those different reflexes. And in our world, we're getting more uh things that are causing lack of movement. We have things like smart bassinets that um inhibit movement. So uh babies can sleep better. We have different chairs and different things that, you know, act as, and and you know, don't get me wrong, as a parent myself, I understand how some of these devices can end up uh giving parents a break, but they also inhibit the natural movement these childs need to start developing their neural networks. I think that's something that gets lost uh quite a bit is that it is essential for the brain to start to grow and mature. Movement is essential for that activity to happen. The other thing that can inhibit it that's uh unfortunately fairly common is trauma and neglect. So a lot of kids who end up with things we call attachment disorders end up uh oftentimes having some sort of neglect or some sort of abuse uh very early on in life. So it doesn't always have to be a physical type of disruption, it can definitely be emotional. We know from things like uh research from guys like Stephen Porges who developed polyvagal theory, how trauma can disrupt the connectivity of the nervous system, which is really, really important. And so what this is about when we go and try to treat these imbalances, what it's really about is not changing the individual. And that's a point I'll make uh over and over again. You know, frankly, we don't have the power to change who the individual is, but we want to create balance by stimulating those underdeveloped, underwired uh sides of the nervous system. And that can be critical to helping balance out symptoms uh related to ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and other neurodevelopmental disorders. But what's also kind of neat when you kind of think of those disorders, almost all those individuals have some sort of talent, some sort of gift, uh maybe even have genius level capabilities at uh in some area uh in their life, whether it may be art or it might be uh science, or they might be able to incredibly memorize things, or you might have autistic savants out there who have can do things that we can't even comprehend. Um, you know, one example can be um sometimes you can sometimes see autistic children who can read at two years' age. We call that hyperlexia. Um, but later on, they may not be able to comprehend what they're reading. They don't have any reading comprehension. And as we talk about the functions of the left and right brain, we're gonna see that what happens is as we get disruption in the balance of these hemispheres, we can have these extraordinary gifts by hyperwiring of one hemisphere while we have all of these weaknesses caused by an underactivation of another hemisphere. So everything we do is all about created trying to create balance. And so we not only keep the strengths for these individuals, but we uh try to optimize um the weakness or limit the weakness, is probably a better way to say it. So let's start off by talking about the right brain. This is the first uh side of the brain, like I mentioned earlier, that starts to develop. This starts while the baby is in utero, so while the mother is pregnant, and then goes up to about three years of age, uh, being mostly right brain development. The right brain, from a big picture standpoint, is going to be more, think of it more as the brake pedal, okay? It tends to be more inhibitory. It also is gonna stimulate our parasympathetic nervous system, which is more rest and digest and repair. And we're gonna talk more about that as we go through as well. From a motor's perspective, it is really responsible for the large muscle group. So it's really important for coordination. So too little right brain function can lead to discoordination, it can lead to low muscle tone. The right brain is also the sensory part of the brain. It is a main driver of sensory integration. Um, it helps us feel things like pain and hunger and thirst. And it gives the big picture to what we experience. It gives context to what we see. Like I mentioned with the bird, if we're just saying, oh, I gotta get that worm, but you're not aware of all of the dangers associated with getting that worm, then that is going to create an issue. We talk about communication. The right brain is responsible for non-verbal communication. So that's the ability to read people, to understand uh body language, to understand changes in tone of voice of different or different facial features. Um, this is something that I believe got very disrupted during COVID. So these really young children who were trying to develop uh when you know they were just, you know, early on between zero and three when COVID's going on. And you know, they're seeing lots of people with with masks, so they're not seeing facial expressions, they're not uh really able to detect as much change of tone of voice. All of this was a lack of input. This is another thing that can disrupt um development early on. And I think this is critical because before you're evil able to have physical language, you have to develop nonverbal communication and nonverbal uh language before you can even develop verbal language. That's that's very, very important. The right brain also allows us to feel emotions, have empathy, be able to um feel what other people are feeling. Think of that, that is also referred to something as introsception, being able to have gut feelings, intuition are all things that are very important for the right brain. The right brain is also with responsible for withdrawal behavior. So it's our safety mechanism. It tells us, hey, this may not be a safe situation. So that can be a very good, but if you have too much of that right brain function, too much of that fear that can lead to things like anxiety, while too little can lead to risky behavior that we see in some individuals. The right brain also likes new things, it likes to create new things. So this is where we can have people who want to make music or want to make art. Um, it also doesn't like to do the same thing over and over. And when you don't have enough of that right brain function to like novelty, for instance, then we might have individuals who end up with a lot of repetitive behavior, so OCD, maybe ticks and stems and different behaviors like that. The right brain, from an emotional standpoint, is more responsible for negative emotions. So fear and sadness. So too much fear and sadness can lead to things like anxiety and depression. Um, and not enough of it can lead to things like mania. EQ, also known as emotional intelligence, is a right brain function. This is being able to have that moral compass, knowing right from wrong. Like I mentioned a second ago, being able to have empathy for other people. Um, so individuals with not enough EQ or emotional intelligence, um, you in extreme situations might be some of our psychopaths who um, you know, have no ch uh issues uh with harming people, for instance. Um, learning is from a right hemisphere perspective, is also where most of our major attention networks, so uh too less, too little right brain function can lead to um ADHD type of issues where we're not able to have sustained attention or maybe not able to filter out um distractors while we're trying to pay attention. It is also responsible for implicit memory. What does that mean? That means unconscious memory. So those are things that we learn that we don't really remember learning. So very early on, for instance, when we're learning social norms from our parents, when we're learning about social behavior, these are all things that we learn early on implicitly without uh really knowing that we learn it. Like I mentioned earlier, too, it also sees the big picture. So it really helps with reading comprehension, being able to get the gist of a story. And that is really a common thing we see with individuals who can read really well, but then when you ask them what the story was about, they have no clue. The right brain also has a lot of input on how our immune system and how our gut functions. The right brain drives that parasympathetic nervous system, like I said, which is the driver of our digestion, our ability to break down food. So people with too little right brain function often have things like leaky gut or increased food sensitivities. They may have constipation where they have slower gut motility. And it also helps regulate our immune system. The immune system is activated by the sympathetic or our fight and flight system, and it's inhibited by our parasympathetic system. So the right brain is really critical for making sure that immune system doesn't overreact to our bodies. Once we get to about three years of age, that's when our left brain is gonna kick in and start really firing. Um, the left brain is going to be more driven by uh sequential, analytical, um, detail-oriented type of thought processes. It's all about the small pictures, the details. And it likes to do things over and over and over again. So these are gonna be individuals and children who really flourish and crave routine. They like similarity. They don't like new things, they might have meltdowns when they go to new places or new or interact with new people. It's involved in motor planning and motor activation, so it makes us want to move. So too much left brain function might look a lot like hyperactivity, or we might have ticks, or we might have stems. Um, it also is responsible for verbal language. So individuals who have issues with stuttering or um language delays or um other issues with speech might have a left hemisphere delay. The left brain, as far as behavior, is all about approach. It's going towards something, it's goal-oriented, it's wanting to accomplish something. And too much of that can look like mania. Too little motivation can look like depression, or maybe it even looks like a person is unmotivated, or sometimes they come across as lazy or uninterested. Emotionally, the left brain is also evolved with positive emotions, so joy and happiness, pride, um, which too much of this can also look like mania. It also uh can be responsible for things like anger, which anger can oftentimes be a positive emotion because it can help us drive past frustration. But obviously, too much anger can lead to meltdowns in children when we get frustrated, when we're not able to do what we want to do, or we're not able to complete a task. Or maybe in adults it might look like anger management issues, uh, people who fly off the handle uh when they get they get upset. The left brain is also responsible for explicit memory in that and how it learns. So, what that means is it's really dependent on memorizing. Um, too little of this can lead to learning disabilities. Um, it's really involved in academic, um, so the left brain is very good at math and science. And when it's too weak, it can look like things like dyscalculea or issues with uh completing math problems. The left brain also activates the sympathetic nervous system. It evokes our fight and flight response, which is very important for survival, especially in dangerous situations. But too much of that can lead to anxiety. It also is the part that activates the immune system, which is great when we have a virus or a bacteria, but too much of that can cause excess inflammation. Overactivation of the immune system is often what we see in autoimmune disease. It's literally the definition of autoimmune disease. So, what we're starting to see is these imbalances between the left and right not also affect our behavior, the way we learn, the way we perceive the world, how we interpret the world, but also has a big impact of how our bodies function, how our bodies are able to resolve inflammation. And that is why we always use this so often in pretty much this concepts in pretty much all of our patients. Even if you come into me with complaints of thyroid issues or gut issues or autoimmune issues, it's very important that we look at the balance between the brain itself because it can influence how our body operates at a very cellular and simplistic and complex level. So when the right brain is underactive, um, when we have right brain or left brain underactivity, it can come up with a lot of different disorders. With the right brain being weak, you may have things more like ADHD and autism and OCD and Tourette's, maybe attachment disorders, sensory processing disorders. And when the left brain is weak, you can have things like learning disabilities. You can have dyslexia, you can have depression and anxiety, you can have language disorders. You might be an individual that just seems like or comes across to others as unmotivated or lazy. So these are all things that we can solve and balance out by creating balance between the hemispheres. So now it comes down to what do we do about it? How do we create balance uh between these hemispheres? And there's really a very good model that we have to approach these imbalances. Number one, we have to address anything stopping normal development, especially in children. So the number one thing we're going to do uh for those uh for those kids is try to integrate any retained primitive reflexes. Like I've mentioned in our other episode on primitive reflexes, primitive reflexes are really the foundation of neurodevelopment. Everything builds from the bottom up. So we have primitive reflexes that help develop our sensory motor systems, which then help develop the more complex networks of our brain. So integrating those basic foundational uh pieces of the nervous system are always the first step. We also want to resolve any inflammation. This is essential, this is very important for children who might have inflammatory issues like pans or pandas, which is an autoimmune issue that impacts inflammation directly on the brain. Um, we may have to do things to balance out the microflora. Anything that creates inflammation can stop us from integrating uh the hemispheres. Then the next thing we want to do is directly stimulate either the right or left brain through different sensory applications. So, for instance, we can use sound at different frequencies and we can play it in one ear to stimulate the opposite hemisphere. We can also use light, we can flash light on the outside of one eye to stimulate another hemisphere. We can use vibration on one side of the body to create proprioception and simulate those sensory pathways on one side of the brain. We can use things like red light therapy, where we can put red light directly on specific sides of the brain in specific broadband areas, different regions of the brain related to different functions that can help create neuroplasticity and connectivity in those weaker hemispheres. We can also use direct cranial stimulation where we put uh equipment that goes directly on certain regions of the brain to also stimulate the connectivity in those areas. And when we do that, what we're gonna do is again, we're not gonna change the individual. We're not gonna change who they are, their personality is gonna be exactly the same, but we're just gonna be strengthening their weakness. I think a lot of individuals who have things like anxiety and depression would tell themselves or tell anybody, you know, if I could get rid of this weakness, um, that would be a huge game changer in my life. And it is, and it not only affects them emotionally, but almost all those individuals end up feeling physically better and even see their lab work change as their brain becomes more balanced. And that in turn leads their body to be more balanced and become healthier individuals. So I hope that gives you guys a better insight on what asymmetry of the left and right brain really means, why it's important and why it exists. It is important to realize now that everyone is asymmetrical, okay? That is normal. We all are left brain dominant or right brain dominant. It's all about these extremes. So that's why it's very important. We're not trying to make everyone even left and right. Brain. That's just not how things work. That's not what we're trying to accomplish. We're trying to create more balance to create better function within these individuals. So I hope that's uh helpful to you guys. I hope you enjoyed uh this episode. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube at Neurotrition Podcast. And don't forget to visit our website at healthytalahasse.com where you can find out how we can help you with your brain asymmetries and create balance without with throughout your life. We look forward to seeing you guys on the next next episode. And don't forget to drop us a comment on what you thought about the show, and we'll see you next time.