Examining data on about 400,000 people, scientists discovered that the left and right hemispheres of the brain were better connected and more coordinated in regions involving language in left-handed people. These traits suggest that left-handed individuals may have superior verbal skills.
One hemisphere of the brain is activated when we use our dominant hand, but both are activated when we use the other. If creativity is located in your non-dominant hemisphere, for example, using your non-dominant hand may stimulate those brain cells. Cooperation between hemispheres is good.
Each hemisphere is in charge of the opposite side of the body, so your right brain controls your left hand. The right hemisphere also takes in sensory input from your left side and vice versa.
But handedness has its roots in the brain—right-handed people have left-hemisphere-dominant brains and vice versa—and the lefties who claim Einstein weren't all that far off. While he was certainly right-handed, autopsies suggest his brain didn't reflect the typical left-side dominance in language and speech areas.
“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.
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.
Most of the current research suggests that left-handedness has an epigenetic marker—a combination of genetics, biology and the environment. Because the vast majority of the population is right-handed, many devices are designed for use by right-handed people, making their use by left-handed people more difficult.
A stronger neural connection doesn't equal a smarter brain
And people do perform tasks better with their non-dominant hand after training. But the gains are limited to the particular task or skill that is being trained and not the entire brain.
Our brains have two sides, or hemispheres. In most people, language skills are in the left side of the brain. The right side controls attention, memory, reasoning, and problem solving.
Magnetic resonance imaging of 1,000 people revealed that the human brain doesn't actually favor one side over the other. The networks on one side aren't generally stronger than the networks on the other side.
It does offer an advantage in sports
There's one thing that most handedness experts can agree on: lefties have the upper hand (pun intended) when it comes to one-on-one sports like tennis, boxing, and pitching a baseball.
Elon Musk is right handed.
A 2011 study from the American College of Chest Physicians suggested that left handers have significantly higher chances of developing periodic limb movement disorder (PLMD). This disorder is characterized by involuntary, repetitive limb movements that happen while you sleep, resulting in disrupted sleep cycles.
Although teaching people to become ambidextrous has been popular for centuries, this practice does not appear to improve brain function, and it may even harm our neural development. Calls for ambidexterity were especially prominent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Becoming proficient with your left hand will not happen overnight - it's a process that could take months or even years to complete. So if you want to learn how to use your left hand, you will need to commit to practicing daily. Set some time aside each day to practice your left handwriting.
Left-handedness was associated with differences in brain asymmetry in areas related to working memory, language, hand control and vision. Some of these brain areas were linked to specific genes. Scientists have long been fascinated by left-handedness.
Left-handed people have right brain dominance for body control, which may also result in the more artistic personality for which such people are known. However, as can be seen by the fact that there are numerous right-handed artists as well as left-handed rational thinkers, brain lateralization only goes so far.
Prior research has shown that the human brain stores different kinds of memories in its two hemispheres—the left hemisphere retains verbal information, for example, while the right hemisphere tends store visual memories.
Examining data on about 400,000 people, scientists discovered that the left and right hemispheres of the brain were better connected and more coordinated in regions involving language in left-handed people. These traits suggest that left-handed individuals may have superior verbal skills.
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.
Researchers have identified, for the first time, the genetic differences between right-handed and left-handed people. In left-handed people, both sides of the brain tend to communicate more effectively. This means that left-handed people may have superior language and verbal ability.
For example, if both parents are right-handed, there is a 1 in 10 chance of having a left-handed child. If the father is left-handed, the odds are 2 in 10. If the mother is left-handed, the odds rise to 3 in 10. And if both parents are left-handed, the child has a 4 in 10 chance of being left-handed.
THIS STUDY TESTED WHETHER LEFT-HANDED JUVENILES ARE OVERREPRESENTED AMONG VIOLENT JUVENILE OFFENDERS AND FOUND THAT LEFT-HANDED OFFENDERS SCORED LOWER THAN RIGHT-HANDERS ON THE VIOLENCE SCALE.