Study shows left-handers have BETTER verbal skills and their brains develop differently

Four genetic regions have been discovered which could lead to a left hand and could also be the reason why left-handers have superior language skills.

The study of left-handers did not identify specific "left genes", but limited them in the human genome to certain areas.

The researchers then discovered that the left hand could be a byproduct of brain development in the uterus as well as microtubules of the body.

These form the cell cytoskeleton, the internal scaffold that supports most of the heavy tasks in human cells.

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Dr. Akira Wiberg, a researcher at the Medical Research Council at Oxford University, who performed the analyzes, said, "We found that left-handed participants in left and right language brain communicate with each other. in a more coordinated way.

"This raises the fascinating possibility of future research that left-handed people may have an advantage when it comes to performing verbal tasks, but it must be remembered that these differences have not been seen." as averages over a very large number of people and not for all leftists. " will be similar.

According to previous studies, about one in ten people are leftist with genes responsible for a quarter of cases.

Dr. Wiberg said, "About 90% of the people who work are right-handers, for at least 10,000 years.

"Many researchers have studied the biological underpinnings of tolerance, but the use of large datasets from the British Biobank has allowed us to shed much more light on the processes leading to the left hand."

The results were based on a gene analysis of 400,000 participants in the British biobank, including 38,332 left-handed.

Professor Dominic Furniss, co-lead author of the study, said: "Throughout history, awkwardness has been considered unlucky, even malicious.

& # 39; Indeed, this is reflected in the words for left and right in many languages. For example, in English, "right" also means correct or correct; in French, "left" means both awkward and awkward.

"We have demonstrated here that the left hand is a consequence of the biology of brain development, in part due to the complex interaction of many genes.

"It's part of the rich tapestry of what makes us humans."

The exact genes that cause the left-handedness are not known, but the new study, published in the journal Brain, associates four genetic traits or "regions" to it.

Three of them were linked to proteins, themselves linked to tiny structures similar to the bones of cells, called microtubules.

These tiny molecules are part of the "scaffolding" inside cells, or the cytoskeleton, which guides how cells are constructed and what they do.

The researchers found that the genetic traits of the left hand affect cytoskeletons located in an area of ​​the brain that reaches the language-processing regions.

Professor Gwenaëlle Douaud said: "Many animals have left-right asymmetry, such as a snail shell curled left or right, motivated by genes for cell scaffolding, which we call the" cytoskeleton ".

"For the first time in humans, we have been able to establish that these cytoskeletal differences associated with tolerance are actually visible in the brain.

"We know from other animals, such as snails and frogs, that these effects are caused very early by genetically guided events. This therefore raises the fascinating possibility that distinctive signs of future development of manipulation will appear in the brain in the womb. & # 39;