Left handed or right handed? This may be due to your genetic characteristics
Ninety percent of us are right handed and left handedness is significantly more rare. Left handers were often believed to be “unlucky” “not smart” in old days. In English language, the word “right” meant correct and true, or a French word “gauche” translates to left and clumsy. At the same time, you often hear that left handers possess special and unique characteristics thus raising a question ‘what causes people’s hand preference?’
Previous cases reported that genetic and family history impacted the hand preference. However, the detailed relationship between genome and handedness still remains unknown.
In order to solve the mystery, researchers from University of Oxford published a new study in Brain discussing the role of genome in determining the handed preference.
Close to 700 left-handers and 6600 right-handers’ brain images were analyzed to create a image-derived phenotypes related to brain functionality.
The result showed that left handers have stronger coordination between right sided and left sided language region of the brain.
“This raises the intriguing possibility for future research that left-handers might have an advantage when it comes to performing verbal tasks, but it must be remembered that these differences were only seen as averages over very large numbers of people and not all left-handers will be similar.” said by Dr Akira Wiberg, a Medical Research Council fellow at the University of Oxford, who carried out the analyses.
The study also discovered genetic variants in 4 genome regions related to hand preference when comparing left handedness versus right handedness. Study pointed out that 3 of the genome regions determined the process of making and folding the proteins.
When our body produced proteins, proteins built up and formed microtubules which played very important role in supporting the structure and function of the cells.
How the protein folded and what types of the protein were made were determined by the variant of genes thereby determining the function or structure of the brain.
All of the above factored into the prevalence of brain diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.
The study also announced that one genome region is correlated with the structural connectivity of white matter.
Left handers would have increased risk of having psychiatric phenotype while having small chances of having Parkinson disease, according to the study result.
The researchers concluded that the variation of genes could contribute to the neurodevelopment of brain, which impacted the handedness and some mental illnesses.
The study just solved the myth that our preference on handedness was based on the genetic factor. No matter left handed or right handed, all demonstrated the characteristics of life.
For additional information please explore Brain.
Questions: Do you know many left-handers? What unique characteristics do they possess in your opinion?
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