Whether you’re left handed or right handed, you’ve probably wondered why you’re one or the other. Well, science has finally explained why, and why being left handed is much less common.
You’ve probably thought, “is it just something we learn to have a preference for over time, or is it something to do with our neurological wiring from birth?” It is in fact… (drum roll please), nothing to do with your brain at all. According to a study published in the journal eLife, it seems that your left or right-handedness is actually ingrained in your biological workings from before you were born, but in the form of a particular hubbub of gene activity in the spine, not the brain.
“Our data suggest a spinal, not a cortical, beginning of hemispheric asymmetries,” the team found.
The fate of your hands is decided around the eighth week of development in the womb, according to research. And based on activity in proto-spinal cords, it seems that there’s some asymmetry going on there that’s never before been detected. Although it’s not yet clear what environmental/external factors affecting your hand orientation are, it is possible that they alter how enzymes operate around the developing baby, which in turn changes how their genes are able to express themselves. This then influences the asymmetry of gene activity present within the spine.
