Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

Debate still rattles about the capabilities of that 10 percent of the population --  left-handers. From being forced to change dominance at school, to worries about their creative capabilities … left-handers differ in ways that remained a mystery. How so?

Researcher Clyde Francks of Oxford University is helping to crack a few new codes … using modern technology … to explain how left handed brains differs.

Left-handedness links to neurodevelopmental disorders, according to Daniel Geschwind, at UCLA expert.  Autism and schizophrenia tend toward left-handedness, and so too do mental strengths. More MIT professors and musicians and architects, tend to be left-handed and research has begun to show why.

It seems that left-handed people’s brain  develop more freely in utero.  Specifically … basic wiring  differs from the usual brain’s patterns. For instance … we know that left brain hemispheres help with logical sequence when people read or speak … while  the right takes on wider operations such as visual perception. We also know that 90 percent of people show a dominant left hemisphere … and are right-handed … while the opposite is true of left-handers.

New research points to what makes left-handers' brains appear less predictable. Did you know, for instance:

1. Left-handedness runs in families,
2. Left-handers more often produce left-handed children … yet most of their offspring are right-handed.
3. It appears that certain genes lead to right-handedness … while less-common genes leave dominance up to chance.
4. Identical twins tend to share a more similar brain structure if they are both right-handed … than if left-handed or mixed pairs.
5. No single right-handedness gene has yet been identified.
6. Left-handers tend to share a variant of the gene called LRRTM1 which is active as developing brains initially wire and set connections.
7. Certain environmental factors influence people one way or the other.
8. Researchers point to some links between left-handedness and schizophrenia, autism and at times … homosexuality.
9. Mounting evidence shows that left-handed brains can get off track during development and that freedom allows some brains to vary from common designs.
10. Some evidence points to mixed-handers with a wider connecting pathway — or corpus callosum — which connects the right and left hemispheres. This makes it harder to do more than one thing at a time … such as playing a different rhythm with each hand.

While left-hander brains have yet to yield significant secrets that explain differences … research suggests how it happens and why it matters. What have you been told?