Psychologists studying patients with brain damage have concluded that the left side of the brain is used for language tasks and the right side for spatial and pictorial information. Scientists who make images of the brain at work, however, have concluded that the left side is used for memorization and the right side for retrieval.

A new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine at St. Louis found that when a person is told to remember a word, a region on the left side of the brain is activated. When a person is told to remember an image, a region on the right side is activated. Both regions are activated when a person is asked to recall an image they can name.