DNA for Left-Handedness Linked to Better Verbal Skills – IOTW Report

DNA for Left-Handedness Linked to Better Verbal Skills

BBC

Scientists have found the first genetic instructions hardwired into human DNA that are linked to being left-handed.

The instructions also seem to be heavily involved in the structure and function of the brain – particularly the parts involved in language.

The team at the University of Oxford say left-handed people may have better verbal skills as a result.

But many mysteries remain regarding the connection between brain development and the dominant hand. More

31 Comments on DNA for Left-Handedness Linked to Better Verbal Skills

  1. But their left hand doesn’t know what their right hand is doing!

    Besides, left-handed people have shifty eyes, weird looking goatees and they shake hands funny.

    Plus, when southpaws cross the Equator, they get all confused and start doing head stands and stuff.

    Oh, aaaaaand, it it it it didn’t help Obama any.

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  2. @Bongo ~ but how smart are your britches? 😉

    btw, left-handed as a youngster. my parents insisted I use my right hand w/ my crayons, so I grew up writing right-handed. played guitar left-handed (upside-down right-handed guitars), clarinet right-handed (that’s all they had) shattered my right wrist in an industrial accident when I was 24. now I play right-handed guitar … not too well either

    anyway, that’s my excuse for my eccentricity weirdness

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  3. I don’t know if there have been any studies on this but it would seem that south paws would have to adapt skills at a young age to adhere to a right-handed world. That would probably affect brain development. And make them more adaptable as well as other potential benefits from working around problems with their leftiness…Like verbal skills. And life is all about solving problems. So Lefties, especially white lefties are the worst of the worst! 🙂 How many south paw Asians go to Stuyvesant, one of the best schools in NYC, Bill DeBlasio?

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  4. I was supposed to be left-handed. Don’t remember anyone telling me to use my right hand, but I do most things right-handed. Just a few things I do better with my left hand.

    I found out when someone told me to clasp my hands together, like praying.

    Try it.

    Now, which thumb is on top? If it’s your left thumb, you are or were supposed to be left handed. Try it the other way. Feels weird, huh?

    Don’t know if it’s scientific or anything.

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  5. Completely ambidextrous under the age of five (used to drive my Mom crazy). Gradually became right-handed. Except dealing cards: left. Look out, I’ll get ya! My biggest problem was eyesight: near-sighted in one eye, far-sighted in the other. One from my Mom, one from my Dad. Weird.

    (I still don’t know yet what to do with the extra pinky finger on both hands.)

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  6. I’m left handed but only in writing. Guitar I’m right handed, and baseball I bat righty, but throw or catch with either hand. In tennis I use either hand for anything.

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  7. I write left handed. I do other weird shit left handed as well, a table setting for instance.

    However, everything else, I do right handed. Throw, golf, shoot, etc. I don’t know why, especially when I can also write right handed. But what’s even more odd about writing these days. I write so infrequently, that right hand writing isn’t nearly as awkward as it used to be, almost natural now. I have a thought that it may be related to POS machines. I get a kick out of the people who seriously sign their name. I just grab the wand/pen, select my method of payment and then basically squiggle something. So, seeing as how 9/10 times I grab a pen like object, I do it right handed, it’s become more natural. Further, since I no longer write, my handwriting has become a mix of cursive and print with capital letters mid-word.

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  8. I forgot about shooting, Aaron Burr…

    I rifle and shotgun lefty. Can’t do it the other way. But pistols it doesn’t matter, although I prefer left.

    The problem there is I’m right eyed. I have to close or squint the offensive right eye to use long arms… and when pistoling with the left hand.

    And I’m right footed. I can only wah-wah righty.

    And climbing telephone poles was tough. I wanted to make the first strike with the right foot but wanted to raise my strong hand twice before I shifted my weight to my left leg.

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  9. Did anyone say southpaws or Randy Koufax?

    I’m a proud RIGHTY.

    My first son is a lefty (yet solid righty, ha ha) and is QUITE ahead of his years as a 14 year old verbally. We debate shit, in a good way, regularly.

    I have seen older lefties that when they write, it is in a way to, in an old fashion, let the ink dry back in the day. The hand makes this weird concocted gesture, in an arched manner.

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  10. Bell had what to me was a strange way of climbing poles. It was called the marionette method (Hand goes up — foot on that side follows). You stand at the pole with both hands grasping the pole at shoulder level. Which foot will you make the first strike? For a right footed first striker he raises his right hand the distance of the footed strike and grasps the pole. He raises his right foot and strikes and stands on the gaff. He then raises his left hand the distance of the next strike and grasps the pole. He then strikes with the left gaff and stands upon it. On and on until he gets to the terminal or falls off and dies on the massive rocks 60 feet below him.

    There was never a time I climbed a pole in Bell that I didn’t have to think about the method. Every step.

    It’s a brilliant method that keeps the weight shifting quickly to the lower locked leg. But I could never just DO it. I had to think about it.

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  11. First grade, those huge pencils you had to rest on your shoulder.
    Learning to write with my right.
    Mom: “What are you doing?”
    Me: “Learning to write my name.”
    Mom: “But you know how to write.”
    Me: “The teacher says I use the wrong hand, I have to use my right hand to write.”
    Mom and Dad were both lefties, Mom drove me to school the next day.
    Wish I had heard the conversation.
    Leftie to this day.
    Suffered some nerve damage to the right, amazing how much I did with the right cause it is mechanically easier in a right handed world.

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  12. I’m left handed and as most others we developed many ambidextrous functions to adapt. Finding products for left handed people can be a challenge for example baseball gloves, bolt action rifles, guitars etc. It’s an inconvenience when growing up.
    Left handed baseball bats are a real bitch to find.

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