“Most left-handers seem to have similar language processing to right-handers,” Grimshaw says. For other one-sided brain functions, such as attention, emotion, music, and face perception, she says, there are less data. “But for the most part, left-handers do not differ obviously from right-handers.
Left-handed people are said to be good at complex reasoning, resulting in a high number of lefty Noble Prize winners, writers, artists, musicians, architects and mathematicians. According to research published in the American Journal of Psychology, lefties appear to be better at divergent thinking.
“When we're left-handed, our right brains are usually dominant, and that's where creativity and intuition are centered. So it's often easier for us to be creative than logical.
As it turns out, left-handers might have the advantage in certain areas like, say, piloting a jet fighter or talking and driving at the same time. A study published in the journal Neuropsychology in late 2006 suggests that left-handed people are faster at processing multiple stimuli than righties.
As handedness is a highly heritable trait associated with various medical conditions, and because many of these conditions could have presented a Darwinian fitness challenge in ancestral populations, this indicates left-handedness may have previously been rarer than it currently is, due to natural selection.
Wright and Hardie (2012) found that left-handers reported higher levels of state anxiety but there was no difference in trait anxiety. They also demonstrated that when Trait Anxiety was controlled for, left-handers still showed a higher level of state anxiety compared to right-handers.
Our confidence intervals at a 95% confidence level show that the average IQ for a left handed person is between 117.73 and 127.19 and for a right handed person it is between 109.9 and 123.5.
Lefties--or at least relatives of lefties--may be better than right-handed people at remembering events, according to a new study. Since the mid-1980s, scientists have known that the two brain hemispheres of left-handers are more strongly connected than those of right-handers.
Being a leftie has a genetic component, is linked to better verbal skills and is associated with a lower risk of Parkinson's disease, according to a new study published in the journal Brain.
right-handed people as regards the relative advantages or disadvantages of being a "Southpaw." Lefties are a little more likely to say life is much harder for them, but some — about one in 10 — actually think life is easier as a left-handed person.
In their analysis of 144 handedness and brain laterality studies—accounting for a total of nearly 1.8 million individuals—University of Oxford psychologists Marietta Papadatou-Pastou, PhD, and Maryanne Martin, PhD, found that males are about 2 percent more likely to be left-handed than females.
Hand preference probably arises as part of the developmental process that differentiates the right and left sides of the body (called right-left asymmetry). More specifically, handedness appears to be related to differences between the right and left halves (hemispheres ) of the brain.
Left-handed and ambidextrous people are more susceptible to negative emotions, including anger. A small study published last year in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease found that the brains of lefties process emotions differently than those of righties, with more communication between the brain's two halves.
McManus which found that the Netherlands has one of the world's highest prevalences of left-handedness at 13.23 percent. The United States isn't far behind with a rate of 13.1 percent while neighboring Canada has 12.8 percent. Elsewhere, rates of left-handedness are far lower and China is a good example.
“Most left-handers seem to have similar language processing to right-handers,” Grimshaw says. For other one-sided brain functions, such as attention, emotion, music, and face perception, she says, there are less data. “But for the most part, left-handers do not differ obviously from right-handers.
And when a group of neurologists scanned the brains of four hundred and sixty-five adults, they found no effect of handedness on either grey or white matter volume or concentration, either globally or regionally.
Hicks and colleagues (1999) found that left-handers had significantly more lucid dreams and fantastic nightmares than right-handers. Paradoxically, however, lefties seem to recall fewer dreams than right-handers but this may be due to the fewer REM episodes they experience.
Elon Musk is right handed.
Browse through a list of history's most famous left-handers and you are likely to see Albert Einstein's name. You may even see people tying Einstein's genius to his left-handedness.
Lefties get angrier
A study in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease suggested that those who are left-handed are more prone to negative emotions. It also found that when processing emotions, lefties have a greater imbalance in activity between the left and right brains.
Left-handedness, or “southpaws,” is most common in males, as well as more common in those who experience a neurological disorder such as dyslexia, mental retardation, schizophrenia, and autism. This does not mean that those who are left-handed are mentally ill.
They found no difference in IQ levels among left- and right-handed people, but left-handers appeared to be more likely to have an intellectual disability. However, this study indicated that people who were intellectually gifted or following typical development were also just as likely to be left-handed.