You’re Not Wired Up Right…
Something of a phenomenon is swirling around the internet. A couple of months ago Doug Scott, Alex Dunsdon and Chris Tottman coined the term ‘LinkyBrains’. This quickly developed into an organisation with the mission statement “We believe that society, business and science make giant leaps forward because of certain types of people who connect unrelated dots and create entirely new ways we live our lives — we call these people LinkyBrains™.”
They talk about LinkyBrains being ‘wired’ differently from the majority.
Following on from this, I wanted to explore an area of this notion where there is physical evidence of this ‘wiring’ difference, namely left-handedness, which occurs in about 10% of the population. It may well be that LinkyBrains who are right-handed also have physical differences from the majority of the population, but I will concentrate on left-handedness in this article.
I am certainly not saying that all LinkyBrains are left-handed, though it would be very interesting to determine how many actually are southpaws.
This is not an academic paper, nor am I a neuroscientist. However, I am left-handed and have seen several of the characteristics and attitudes ascribed to LinkyBrains also frequently attributed to left-handed people.
Societies tend to be wary of groups that do not conform, indeed, ‘sinister’, is derived directly from the Latin word for ‘left’. Some cultures, such as the Incas, Buddhists and the early Romans looked upon left-handers positively, considering them to possess special abilities,whereas many religions including Christianity and Islam variously identity the left hand as unclean and associated with evil.
Wikipedia tells us that historically “due to cultural and social pressures, many left-handed children were encouraged or forced to write and perform other activities with their right hands. This conversion can cause multiple problems in the developing left-handed child, including learning disorders, dyslexia, stuttering and other speech disorders.”
Where does this ‘wiring’ difference occur? A thesis submitted by Riti Trivedi in 2010 as part of psychology degree tells us “The corpus callosum is a commissural tract connecting the cerebral hemispheres and influences interhemispheric interactions.”
It further posits “Left-handed individuals have slightly different brain organization than those who are right-handed. For example, diffusion tensor imaging data reveal that left-handers have higher fractional anisotropy and lower mean diffusivity in the callosum; this may indicate more connectivity between the hemispheres in comparison to right-handers (Westerhausen et al., 2004). Also, evidence from post-mortem studies revealed that left-handed people and mixed-handers have larger corpus callosa, specifically in the midsagittal area (Witelson, 1985) that connects the sensorimotor cortices.”
“Previous research has found that the time it takes for information to travel between the two brain hemispheres varies with handedness. In particular, interhemispheric transfer time (IHTT), the time it takes for information to travel between the brain’s right and left hemispheres, varies between handedness groups (Cherbuin & Brinkman, 2006). IHTT is thought to be closely related to the corpus callosum, the bundle of white matter that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain and allows them to communicate with each other (Cherbuin & Brinkman, 2006).”
Whilst Riti Trivedi’s research was not able to corroborate the findings of the earlier Cherbuin & Brinkman work, it is certainly reasonable to conclude from the post-mortem evidence referenced the tendency that ‘left-handed people and mixed-handers have larger corpus callosa’ than right-handed people. It is also reasonable to conclude that there are differences in the way information is transferred between the brain hemispheres of some left-handed people compared with right-handed people.
So, it would seem that Messrs. Scott, Dunsdon and Tottman are right, both figuratively and literally. Some LinkyBrains, at least, really are ‘wired’ differently. Perhaps when people disparagingly say “you’re not wired up right”, they should be saying “you’re wired up differently from me and I salute that”.
