No—not as a personality rule. People are not reliably divided into creative “right-brained” types and logical “left-brained” types. Brain functions can be lateralized, but creativity involves different networks across both hemispheres, and findings depend on the task being studied.
What “right-brained” gets wrong
The brain does show hemispheric specialization: some functions rely more heavily on one side than the other. But that does not mean a whole-person trait such as creativity belongs to one hemisphere, or that individuals can be sorted into creative and logical brain types.
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In a 2014 review, psychologist and neuroscientist Michael Corballis wrote that left/right polarities “owe more to the power of myth than to the scientific evidence.” He traced the popular stereotype in part to genuine findings about specialization and split-brain research, which were often simplified into a broader claim about personality. Read Corballis’s review.
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There is no single brain-imaging result that settles where creativity “lives.” Studies examine different creative tasks, use different methods, and may measure either activity during a task or associations with a score. An imaging signal shows which regions are active or connected under particular conditions; by itself, it does not prove that a region uniquely causes creativity.
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Some reviews report a right-sided contribution
A 2010 meta-analytic review of earlier work found conflicting results but reported relative right-hemisphere dominance in its synthesis. A 2017 study also described a specific right-hemisphere association: participants with reduced neural responses in the right-hemisphere dopaminergic system had higher scores on the study’s creativity measures and increased associative processing in that hemisphere. These findings make it inaccurate to say the right hemisphere never matters. They do not establish that one side controls creativity or that people have fixed “creative brain” types. 2010 review; 2017 study.
Other evidence points to distributed or task-dependent activity
A 2015 meta-analysis of 45 fMRI studies found activity across bilateral frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital regions. The patterns differed across musical, verbal, and visuospatial creativity tasks. A 2013 meta-analysis of 34 functional-imaging studies reported a predominantly left-hemisphere set of regions shared across the tasks it included. A separate 2011 review emphasized interaction among varied cortical regions in both hemispheres. Taken together, these results suggest that the task and method matter more than a simple left-versus-right label. 2015 meta-analysis; 2013 meta-analysis; 2011 review.
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Does handedness predict creativity?
No reliable overall link has been established. A 2025 review supported by meta-analyses found no evidence that left- or mixed-handed people are more creative than right-handed people. The authors did report that right-handers scored statistically higher on one standard divergent-thinking test, while left- and mixed-handers were underrepresented in creative professions overall. Those findings concern particular measures and occupational representation; they do not show that handedness determines creative ability. Read the 2025 review.
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What to take away
- Hemispheric specialization is real; the stereotype that creative people are “right-brained” is not a sound way to describe individuals.
- Research finds different patterns depending on the kind of creativity measured, with evidence of right-sided contributions as well as bilateral, distributed, and task-dependent activity.
- Neither a scan result nor handedness provides a reliable shortcut for identifying who is creative.
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