Left or Right?

Are you left-handed? If so, you’re a member of an exclusive group comprising just 10% of the population. Because many functions are split differently between the left and right sides of our brains, researchers are curious to understand whether there are also differences in the way that left-handers’ brains are wired up compared with right-handers. By analysing brain imaging data from more than 800 people, of whom just over 100 were left-handed, researchers have discovered that there are several interconnected brain regions which show greater activity in left-handed people than right (green) and right-handed people than left (purple). The team now wants to see if these differences are also affected by sex, as males are more likely to be left-handed than females, whether there are any links between handedness and mental disorders, and what happens in the brains of people who are ambidextrous and can use each hand equally well.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

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Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image from work by Link Tejavibulya and colleagues
• Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven CT, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-ND-NC 4.0)
• Published in bioRxiv, August 2021 (not peer reviewed)