Chimpanzees Shed New Light on Hand Preference 519
An anonymous reader writes "'Language skills are associated with the left side of the brain, and many scientists have said early humans developed a preference for their right hands when they acquired speech,' but Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center has a new study that links hand preference to the motor skills area of the brain rather than the language part of the brain. 'That means lefties have probably been around much longer than believed -- at least 5 million years, when scientists say humans and apes branched on the primate family tree. And evolution has purposely kept them.'"
why choose? (Score:2, Interesting)
most dogs are left handed (Score:3, Interesting)
only a "scientist" could attribute this to something recent like language skills.
Re:!tsop dednah tfet tsriF (Score:5, Interesting)
You Sinistromanualist, you...
More seriously the, errr, granparent post is referring to this happening to his grandfather. Minus the beating, this was still happening to me when I was at school in the eighties (UK). An English teacher made a concerted effort to force me to be right-handed, and it completely messed up my writing. You can see a clear difference between the schoolbooks I had before her 'teaching', and those I wrote afterwards.
For the worse, of course.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:I had never heard of this (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:From the its-bloody-obvious-department (Score:3, Interesting)
Slashdot Left Handers (Score:1, Interesting)
While at Georgia Tech, I was amazed at how many left handed people their were in all my classes. Being left-handed myself, I had always noticed that the percentage around me approached approximately what wikipedia says is the average, or 10-13%. I'd say at Tech it was more like 30-40%.
For the most part they were all a bunch o toolbags, but luckily I'm in good company with Ned Flanders...
I've been thinking of starting a lawsuit for reparations for all the discrimination myself and all my left-handed bretheren have suffered over the years. Society's first attempt to make me feel bad was those damn right-handed scissors in Kindergarden, and it hasn't stopped. We're talking decades of trauma hear, and this didn't happen to my ancestors. Hell, just think about where the attached pen is next time you sign a credit card reciept.
Equal rights for Lefties! Affirmative action for lefties! Welfare for Lefties! State funded concubines for Lefties! Handedness as a criteria for college admissions!
Re:!tsop dednah tfet tsriF (Score:2, Interesting)
At the station in my town 4 out of the 9 EMS workers are left handed.
Re:... evolution has purposely kept them ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I am left-handed and I can say I do take advantage of it. I play volleyball and it always takes some adjusting until the opponent starts to block my left hand instead of my right. Playing squash, opponent often let me play mostly forhand because they don't realise my weak side is the other one.
And quite obviously, this is even true for two left-handed opponents playing against each other. With majority of my opponents being right-handed, I myself am taken bu surprise when I meet left-handed opponent.
Obvously, this advantage is lesser in repeated encounters and lesser when there are more left-handed people around.
Re:... evolution has purposely kept them ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Could you please forward that insight to Logitech ?
third gen lefty writes (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a third gen lefty (tree: PGM, F, myself). My eldest son fell from near my side of the family tree and he (now 6) has only ceased to be ambidexterous in the last two months. He went to the dark side and uses his right hand to throw and write. Still bats and kicks left however so maybe he'll make it to the major leagues yet. Still holding out hope for the newborn daughter.
Anyway, I'm PhD physicist, my Dad (LH) is a very talented mechanical designer/engineer. Grandmother was a puzzle wizard. If you look at PhD level scientists you will find more than the nominal 10% LH... which does not support the "less analytical" assertion. On the other hand (pun?) perhaps we LH are less analytical but in return we are given better gifts to see analytic tasks as in a more wholistic light. Maybe this is why Maxwell's Equations, classical E&M, the Standard Model Lagrangian and GR are as beautiful as Sunday Afternoon by Seurat or as magnificent as DaVinci's David to me.
Reason for existence (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Evolution wants to be anthropomorphised? (Score:5, Interesting)
As a christian, I strongly agree.
It's ridiculous to suppose that God would have created a whole universe and then expected us to restrict our examination of it to a short list of statements.
And in Victorian times, everyone used to think the same way; the business of a scientist(*) was to admire, analyse, and better appreciate God's creation. Then the ****ing Evangelicals came along and it all went straight to heck.
(*)Except Frankenstein.
actually, lateral-discrim.does have survival value (Score:1, Interesting)
in a pre-literate, pre-sanitary world, the only way to promulgate useful knowledge is to codify it into mnemonic narratives, enforced by the cloak of the supernatural...ie: why religion was invented
Re:why choose? (Score:2, Interesting)
You're over simplifying. Urge to have sex is definitely genetic in origin. Being discriminating in choice of sexual partners is definitely genetic in origin. Social factors certainly influence both, but the basics of seeking suitable mates and then having sex with them is genetic. Unless I've misunderstood what you mean by a "slut" then genetics play a major role in this and there can be evolutionary factors towards more or less "slutiness".
"Being a scientist" is more of a stretch but a general desire to investigate the environment again has genetic origins - without at least a basic element of this we wouldn't learn anything so it can't be a pure learned response. Once you accept that it is genetic at its most basic level, I don't see how you could deny that genetics can push someone more or less strongly in that direction. Granted, there isn't an actual "physicist" gene which determines your career
List of Famous Left Handed People (Score:3, Interesting)
The list goes on here. [indiana.edu]
My Dog's Got a Name and It's Oscar Mayer (Score:4, Interesting)
It is interesting to see, however, that the Scientific American article [sciam.com] covering the same subject seemed to focus more on the study whose results found similarites in the limbic system asymmetry between primates. The handedness study (which of course waters down easier for the average person) seemed to be second fiddle.
By the way, the actual studies are found here (in 300-500KB PDFs):
Asymmetries in the Hippocampus and Amygdala of Chimpanzees [apa.org]
Handedness in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) Is Associated With Asymmetries of the Primary Motor Cortex but Not With Homologous Language Areas [apa.org]
* I had previously determined that the bisque turned out a bit stringy and that scampi was preferred. This, sadly, derailed the other, more "important" research.
This is an uninformed debate... (Score:3, Interesting)
But chimp research would have to null out the contributions to handedness that might be made by any number of OTHER differences in brain development between humans and the rest of the primates before these scientists, let alone a bunch of
My mom reports that she was probably a lefty but growing up in the 30's in a Missouri village where the dogs barked in German and you were either a Luthern or a Methodist, she had that bad habit beaten out of her. One of my boys writes [illegibly] with his left hand but throws [and I mean quite athletcally: he's an ultimate frisby player] righty.
and PLEASE, if you can't read or react in an informed and rational way concerning the general fact that there are differences between men and women, please exit the conversation NOW!.
Being a southpaw in the information age... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:speaking from the midline (Score:2, Interesting)
You're right in that pre-frontal lobotomies (a la "one flew over the cuckoo's nest") are no longer done but you will find that temporal lobectomies are common for medically-refractive temporal lobe seizures (espec. due to hippocampal sclerosis pathology) and even entire hemispheres (a hemispherotomy) for Rassmussens syndrome are still performed.
On a lighter note, the wonderfully named "Multiple SubPial Transections" has been shown to be very effective for Landau-Kleffner syndrome (where sufferers have extreme difficulty in speech), so you must be very relieved!
Re:!tsop dednah tfet tsriF (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not really natural selection (Score:2, Interesting)
Brain lateralization and personality (Score:2, Interesting)