Left-handed people have been vilified and revered in history, often in the same breath. Either they’re artistic geniuses, like Michelangelo and MC Escher, or they’re touched by Satan.
Approximately 10 percent of the population is left-handed, and the reason why has been a source of scientific and sociological debate for many years. General consensus deemed that handedness was a biological and genetic predisposition.
The theory argued that evolutionary natural selection caused speech and language control to develop in the left hemisphere of the brain. This is the side that controls the right hand and over time, predisposed the majority of the population to genetic right-handed development.
New research provides a different origin story. The cause of handedness is not found in the brain, but the spinal cord.
That’s the conclusion of a new study by lecturer Dr Sebastian Ocklenburg and his team. Together with colleagues from the Netherlands and South Africa, the bio-psychologists confirmed that gene activity in the spinal cord is “asymmetrical already in the womb”.