Attention left handers
Less than two weeks ago, left-handed people had their international day of celebration. Given the 43 million video links on TikTok alone that highlight the struggles left-handers face, 10 percent of the global population deserves more.
Maybe a recent study will help left-handed people understand why they have a different dominant hand.
Researchers examined MRI brain scans of 28,802 right-handed people and 3,062 left-handed people to determine where left-handedness originates in the brain. They also found an additional 10 differences between right and left hand-dominant populations.
For years, scientists believed that hand preference was influenced by external cultural and societal pressures, and that genetics also played a key role. With this study, the distinct asymmetries that were consistently scattered in specific locations throughout the brain convincingly replaced those previous theories.
The findings included some fascinating notations such as how the 10 brain areas that differed in lefties were all larger than those same areas in right handers. Additionally, it is speculated that there is an evolutionary component tied to a point in our human development when communication was more gesture-based. What still remains a mystery is that predicting the likelihood of being left-handed continues to be an unknown. One thing for sure is that regardless of our dominant hand, we think everyone is unique. Cheers to all of us!