The reasons for our left or right-handedness
Unlike hitherto assumed, the cause is not to be found in the brain.
It is not the brain that determines if people are right or left-handed, but the spinal cord. This has been inferred from the research results compiled by a team headed by private lecturer Dr Sebastian Ocklenburg, Judith Schmitz, and Prof Dr H. C. Onur Güntürkün. Together with colleagues from the Netherlands and from South Africa, the biopsychologists at Ruhr-Universität Bochum have demonstrated that gene activity in the spinal cord is asymmetrical already in the womb. A preference for the left or the right hand might be traced back to that asymmetry.
“These results fundamentally change our understanding of the cause of hemispheric asymmetries,” conclude the authors. The team report about their study in the journal “eLife”.
Source and further reading:
http://news.rub.de/english/press-releases/2017-02-17-neuroscience-reasons-our-left-or-right-handedness
Journal article :
https://elifesciences.org/articles/22784
#neuroscience #research #spinalcord #geneactivity #lefthanded
Lefties/south paws......what are you going to do! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this. It was not only fascinating, but completely new and surprising.
ReplyDeleteBut what does that say for the few of us who are ambidextrous?
ReplyDeleteWhat about you Corina Marinescu? Are you left handed or right handed?
ReplyDeleteTom Cook It means we have a certain symmetry in our spinal cords?
ReplyDeleteThanks for this Corina Marinescu. I remember a doctor showing me that my left side was clearly more developed than the right. It was easy to see this from the shoulders. However, I still thought that being left-handed was caused exclusively by the brain.
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