Monday, July 17, 2017

The reasons for our left or right-handedness - NEUROSCIENCE


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

Source: Corina Marinescu

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