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PubMed1992

Non-right handedness among ELBW and term children at eight years in relation to cognitive function and school performance.

The relationship between handedness, neurological and cognitive deficits, and school difficulties was investigated in 114 extremely low-birthweight (ELBW) children and 145 term controls at eight years. The prevalence of non-right handedness (left and mixed) was 31 per cent for ELBW children and 19 per cent for controls. ELBW children with neurological impairments were significantly more likely to be non-right handed. No significant differences were noted between right-handed and non-right handed ELBW children and controls on tests of cognitive function, school performance and prevalence of learning difficulties. These findings suggest an association between neurological impairment and non-right handedness, but do not support the hypothesis of early brain insult resulting in subtle cognitive deficits and suboptimal school performance among non-right handed ELBW children.

Achievement↗
PubMed1993

Handedness and progressive hydrocephalus in spina bifida patients.

Hand preference and functional hand-dominance of 45 spina bifida patients (aged 13 to 25 years) were assessed by means of self-reports on an ordinal scale and a tapping task. Non-right-handedness was more frequent among patients with accompanying progressive hydrocephalus. Left-hand preference was significantly more frequent in this group than in patients without shunts. Non-right-handedness in hydrocephalic patients correlated positively with the estimated degree of pre-operative progress of the hydrocephalus. The apparent failure to establish right-handedness in these patients seemed to reflect a developmental disorder of lateralization, related to a more advanced degree of progressive hydrocephalus at an early age. It is suggested that the disorder may be attributable to dysfunction of the corpus callosum, caused by delay in the development of callosal white matter when the hydrocephalus is in a progressive state.

Corpus Callosum↗
PubMed1994

Childhood hemiplegia: is the side of lesion influenced by a family history of left-handedness?

Family histories of left-handedness were obtained for 396 children with congenital or acquired hemiplegia. As in other studies, right-sided hemiplegia was substantially more common than left-sided hemiplegia. The excess of right hemiplegia was entirely accounted for by children with left-handed relatives. This is contrary to what would be expected if the preponderance of right hemiplegia reflected a greater vulnerability of the dominant hemisphere to early damage. Though the observed association between right hemiplegia and a family history of left-handedness may well have occurred by chance, it could potentially reflect some heritable aspect of cerebral asymmetry (such as slow development of the left hemisphere) that predisposes an individual both to left-handedness and to left-hemisphere injury.

Brain↗
PubMed1990

Non-right-handedness and maleness correlate with tardive dyskinesia among patients taking neuroleptics.

Forty-eight consecutive psychiatric outpatients receiving neuroleptics were assessed for handedness and the presence of tardive dyskinesia (TD). Twenty-seven patients had TD and 21 did not. Twenty-one of the patients with TD had some degree of non-right-handedness compared with 3 of the patients without TD. These results were found to be statistically significant. Maleness also correlated with the presence of TD, but the results were less robustly significant. These findings indicate that non-right-handedness and maleness may correlate with the risk of developing TD. To the author's knowledge, these findings have not been previously reported.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Handedness in 'fast ball' sports: do left-handers have an innate advantage?

The study reported here examined whether left-handedness is an intrinsic advantage in three sports: cricket, tennis, and football (soccer). An analysis of cricket yearbooks showed that over the last four decades there was a relatively high proportion of professional cricketers who bowled left-handed. In contrast, an analysis of handedness in top batsman, as measured by bowling hand, failed to find any evidence of a handedness effect. Similarly, there was no clear, consistent excess of left-handed players among an overall sample of 500 male or 252 female professional tennis players or among 167 professional football goalkeepers. The latter group were of particular interest as left-handed goalkeepers are not tactically favoured by their relative rarity or by the symmetry of the sport. The most parsimonious explanation of the present findings is that any excess of left-handers in these sports is due to the nature of the game and not to any supposed neurological advantage.

Female↗
PubMed1993

The handedness of Kerrs and Carrs.

The surnames Kerr and Carr have been claimed, on the basis of folkloric and etymological evidence, to be associated with an increased incidence of left-handedness. In 1974 a survey by the Royal College of General Practitioners suggested that the incidence of left-handedness was nearly three times as high in Kerr/Carr families as in controls. That survey was however potentially flawed by response biases. In the present study, which used better controls, no evidence was found for an increased incidence of left-handedness in Kerrs and Carrs.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1986

Alexithymia and handedness. A pilot study.

Exploration of the connection between alexithymia and handedness has not been addressed in the literature. Although trends which have been reported between alexithymia and characteristics of individuals may vary with the methods of assessment and types of population, the possible relationships between alexithymia and males and between left-handedness and males raise questions about the relationship between alexithymia and handedness. This pilot study (n = 100) indicates a higher incidence of alexithymia in individuals who are not right-handed. The possible influence of left hemisphere development on the occurrence of alexithymia is discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Is left-handedness a sensitive marker of prenatal exposures or indicators of fetal growth?

Left-handedness has been suggested as a sensitive marker of neurotoxic exposures or of the hormonal environment in fetal life. The prevalence of left-handedness was the subject of a follow-up study in children aged 5 to 9 years and correlated to exposures recorded by their mothers during pregnancy. Altogether 965 children were studied by means of questionnaires completed by the mothers. The response rate was 91%. Smoking, head circumference, Apgar score and indicators of fetal growth retardation were found not to be associated with increased prevalence of left-handedness.

Apgar Score↗
PubMed1983

Observations on the handedness preferences of patients with personality disorders.

A new series of patients with personality disorders has provided an opportunity to extend to both sexes an earlier finding that personality disordered women tend to be mixed handed. Eighty-one subjects completed Annett's handedness questionnaire. The frequency of mixed hand preference in both sexes was similar to that found in the previous study, though deviations from consistent preference were small and dependent on the method used to classify handedness. The hysterical, antisocial and explosive personality types were particularly likely to have mixed handedness. These associations were reflected in small but significant trends among several psychometric variables.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Handedness, language lateralisation and anatomical asymmetry in schizophrenia: meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Cerebral lateralisation appears to be decreased in schizophrenia. Results of studies investigating this, however, are equivocal. AIMS: To review quantitatively the literature on decreased lateralisation in schizophrenia. METHOD: Meta-analyses were conducted on 19 studies on handedness, 10 dichotic listening studies and 39 studies investigating anatomical asymmetry in schizophrenia. RESULTS: The prevalence of mixed- and left-handedness ('non-right-handedness') was significantly higher in patients with schizophrenia as compared to healthy controls, and also as compared to psychiatric controls. The analysis of dichotic listening studies revealed no significant difference in lateralisation in schizophrenia. However, when analysis was restricted to studies using consonant-vowel or fused word tasks, significantly decreased lateralisation in schizophrenia emerged. Asymmetry of the planum temporale and the Sylvian fissure was significantly decreased in schizophrenia, while asymmetry of the temporal horn of the lateral ventricle was not. CONCLUSION: Strong evidence is provided for decreased cerebral lateralisation in schizophrenia.

Brain↗
PubMed2003

Embryonic handedness choice in C. elegans involves the Galpha protein GPA-16.

The mechanism by which polarity of the left-right (LR) axis is initially established with the correct handedness is not understood for any embryo. C. elegans embryos exhibit LR asymmetry with an invariant handedness that is first apparent at the six-cell stage and persists throughout development. We show here that a strong loss-of-function mutation in a gene originally designated spn-1 affects early spindle orientations and results in near randomization of handedness choice. This mutation interacts genetically with mutations in three par genes that encode localized cortical components. We show that the spn-1 gene encodes the Galpha protein GPA-16, which appears to be required for centrosomal association of a Gbeta protein. We will henceforth refer to this gene as gpa-16. These results demonstrate for the first time involvement of heterotrimeric G proteins in establishment of embryonic LR asymmetry and suggest how they might act.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Handedness in twins: joint analysis of data from 35 samples.

Simultaneous analysis of handedness data from 35 samples of twins (with a combined sample size of 21,127 twin pairs) found a small but significant additive genetic effect accounting for 25.47% of the variance (95% confidence interval [CI] 15.69-29.51%). No common environmental influences were detected (C = 0.00; 95% CI 0.00-7.67%), with the majority of the variance, 74.53%, explained by factors unique to the individual (95% CI 70.49-78.67%). No significant heterogeneity was observed within studies that used similar methods to assess handedness, or across studies that used different methods. At an individual level the majority of studies had insufficient power to reject a purely unique environmental model due to insufficient power to detect familial aggregation. This lack of power is seldom mentioned within studies, and has contributed to the misconception that twin studies of handedness are not informative.

Functional Laterality↗
PubMed2006

Prevalence and genetics of immotile-cilia syndrome and left-handedness.

Immotile-cilia syndrome is characterized by severe respiratory distress from early infancy, and also often by situs inversus. The first description of the disease was based on just four persons, but reasons were given to suggest that the disorder may not be exceedingly rare. The purpose of the present study was to estimate just how rare or how common it is and to evaluate its association with situs inversus and with left-handedness. Data were mainly obtained from contacting a large number of Swedish clinicians who kindly informed us about their patients with suspected immotile-cilia syndrome. Diagnosis was in most cases performed by electron microscopical examination of nasal cilia or of spermatozoa. Based on these data, the prevalence of the syndrome in Sweden with or without situs inversus was estimated to be not far from 1 in 10,000. The syndrome consists of several subgroups that have a randomized determination of situs asymmetry (50% of these have situs inversus) and one subgroup in which situs inversus is not found. This results in a frequency of situs inversus in the syndrome of about 44 %. Left-handedness is no more common than it is in healthy persons and no more often associated with situs inversus than with situs solitus. In all cases it is about 14 %. It is concluded that the two major anatomical/physiological asymmetries of the human body are found with frequencies which indicate that they develop independently of each other. Both conditions appear with prevalences that may have changed at a centenary scale, left-handedness with a substantial increase and situs inversus with a less dramatic increase.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Unilateral cleft lip with or without cleft palate and handedness: is there an association?

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of a relationship between the side of occurrence of unilateral clefting of the lip and/or palate and handedness, also taking into account the type of the initial cleft condition, a factor that has not been adequately assessed in previous studies. DESIGN: This was a retrospective study. SETTING: Division of Orthodontics, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada, and Cleft Lip and Palate Program, Children's Hospital, Winnipeg, Canada. PARTICIPANTS: Subjects were 289 patients (176 males and 113 females) 9 years of age or older presenting with a history of unilateral clefts of the lip with or without the palate. Of these patients, 217 were recruited from the patient pool of the Orthodontic Clinic at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. The remaining 72 were selected from the registry of the Cleft Lip and Palate Program of the Children's Hospital in Winnipeg. Any syndromic cases were excluded from the sample. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Assessment of handedness was performed by asking the patients to fill out a multi-item questionnaire in which patients were asked to identify which hand they would use for different tasks. The side and type of the initial cleft condition were identified by reviewing each patient's hospital chart and by cross-referencing with clinical examination. Statistical evaluation of the results was performed by using the chi-square test. RESULTS: There was a significantly larger number of left-sided clefts (198) in the sample than right-sided clefts (91), (p < .001). The proportion of left-sided clefts among left-handers (84.6%) was higher than that among right-handers (66.8%). However, the relationship between side of cleft and handedness was not statistically significant (p = .185). Clefts of the primary palate only seemed to occur on the left side 3.5 times more often than on the right, whereas the corresponding ratio of left:right manifestation for clefts of the primary and secondary palate was 1.8:1. The difference was statistically significant (p < .05). CONCLUSION: The findings of this study confirm the affinity of unilateral clefts for the left side but suggest that there are differences between clefts of the primary palate only and clefts of the primary and secondary palate. Also, non-right-handed patients show a greater predilection for having a cleft on the left side than do right-handed patients.

Chi-Square Distribution↗
PubMed1975

Handedness as a function of test complexity.

Handedness as a function of test complexity was investigated with two tests, Dotting and Tapping-on-squares. For each one three levels of complexity were established by varying radius (Dotting) and square sides (Tapping-on-squares). Administration of the different complexity levels to a total of 310 third and fourth grade boys and girls showed that the rate of left-handedness increased from 6% to 16% with decreasing level of test complexity. It is concluded that optimal classification of handedness is only made possible by maximal levels of test complexity, which have to be established empirically for different populations.

Achievement↗
PubMed1985

Handedness incidence in a population of black university students.

A modified version of the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory was used to assess degrees of left-, mixed-, and right-handedness in USA and Caribbean black university students. The distributional pattern of handedness in men and women was significantly different, largely due to a higher incidence of left- and mixed-handed men. Sinistral incidence in men of this population was significantly higher than that reported in some other studies on Anglo-Saxon populations.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1999

Boundaries and handedness.

The responses of 116 university students were used to assess a possible relation between scores on Hartmann's Boundary Questionnaire and the Briggs-Nebes Handedness Scale. Consistent with our prediction, the mean handedness score of the students with thin boundaries was significantly skewed in the direction of mixed-handedness.

Functional Laterality↗
PubMed1999

EEG correlates of behavioural laterality: right-handedness.

Among right-handers, the magnitude of differences in proficiency between the left and right hands varies considerably. Yet significance of the extent of right-handedness is still a controversial issue. To examine whether individual differences in asymmetry of hand skill can partly be attributed to individual differences in asymmetrical hemispheric activation, handedness and electroencephalographic (EEG) laterality were correlated in two large samples (ns = 60 and 128). Analysis indicated that part of the variability in right-handedness may arise from activation asymmetries in the cortex, but whether this relation becomes apparent depends on the cortical area examined and on the experimental condition under which the EEG measures are taken.

Adolescent↗