Colored pencils scratching lightly against paper and music playing softly in the background are familiar sounds in Drawing and Design, an art class. But occasionally the music is interrupted by a student turning to one of her peers and asking, “How does the code work again?” or another student muttering, “Shoot, I messed up the code.”

The code, an essential part of the Synectic Design project in Drawing and Design, tells students what color to fill in a shape depending on the other shapes it overlaps. By using the code, students incorporate analytical skills to create a better perspective of art, or what some people consider combining the left and right sides of the brain.

It is a common belief that the left and right sides of the brain are responsible for distinct activities. The left hemisphere is associated with language, logic and analytical thinking. Left brained people tend to prefer math and science. Right brained people tend to prefer art and music because their thinking is geared toward spatial awareness, creativity and rhythm.

Yet according to Kevin Novak, Director of Neurophysiology at Evanston Hospital, people being dominantly left or right brained is only a popular myth. The brain always communicates across the hemispheres regardless of the logical or creative nature of the activity.

“The body doesn’t consist of two independent sides,” said Novak. “At some point, all the sensory information processing comes together from the left and right sides of the brain to form a single perception of the body and the world.”

Instead of specifying certain activities as left or right, lateralization of brain function allows specific skills, such as language and imagination, to be stronger in one hemisphere, but the brain still works together as a whole.

“Some individuals, based on experience or genetic giftedness, may overdevelop a particular strength,” said neuropsychologist Elizabeth Geary. “If a particular group of neurons are recruited to fire together, the strength of that synaptic connection grows. Those that aren’t used are pruned away. This is how the brain manages to work efficiently. People may have a strength in some hemisphere-specific ability, and this is what many conceptualize as left versus right brain.”

Sam Crowe, a Northwestern University sophomore, said she considers herself to have strong cognitive abilities in both sides of the brain because of her interest and involvement in science and band at Glenbrook North, before graduating in 2014.

As an incoming freshman at Northwestern’s engineering school, Crowe experienced the school’s whole brain philosophy, an idea implemented right away for engineers to remind them to be creative and intuitive along with thinking logically.

Crowe was assigned a project last year in which they needed to create a type of shoe for a man who had one leg that was five inches shorter than the other and had limited range of motion in his shoulders. To do this, the new class of engineers not only did analytical work through research and calculations but also sketched multiple drafts of shoes.

While Crowe may have strong cognitive abilities involved in both science and music, such as memory and rhythm, not everybody does. The brain organizes itself by lateralization, and depending on where those cognitive abilities are located, people have certain strengths or weaknesses.

“It is the jump from lateralization of function to the theory of left brained versus right brained personality that is wrong,” said Novak. “Yes, they are two different things. No matter how much each side of the brain might be more likely to perform a certain task, both sides always work together. Why would it make sense that someone uses only half their brain?”

The Synectic Design project at GBN may look like an attempt to combine both the left and right sides of the brain, but according to art teacher Lee Block, she just wants to strengthen the logical skills students normally do not use in art class.

Senior Shannon Buttimer, who has done the Synectic Design project, only messed up the color code of the design once, and it made her angry.

“[Breaking the code] breaks the logic but also breaks the aesthetic of the whole thing,” Buttimer said.

According to Buttimer, she considers herself to be balanced, or evenly lateralized between all cognitive abilities. In the future, she is thinking of studying biology or environmental science with an art minor because infographics and designs would help her communicate her ideas as an environmental activist.

“If the goal is new skill development, the brain enjoys stimulation, so engaging it in other ways never hurts,” said Geary. “It’s smart to recognize and capitalize on those strengths while working on remediating weaknesses.”