Left-handed people’s brains would show clear differences in structure. Some researchers want to understand if left-handed people are smarter.
George HW Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. What do they have in common with Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci , Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, James Baldwin, Nikola Tesla , Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs? A report published in 2019 by the New York Times revealed that all of these leading figures in world history use their left hands to write. In other words, they are part of the 10% of the population of the Earth that calls itself “left-handed”.
The question that arises is precisely the one we will try to answer in this article: are left-handed people smarter than the average person? Because it really seems that their presence in the newspapers or in the scientific or artistic pantheon is greater.
Are left-handed people really smarter than the average person?
The answer comes from a study coordinated by Giovanni Sala, assistant professor at the Institute for Comprehensive Medical Science at Fujita Health University in Japan. Sala and his team subjected more than 2,300 Italian students, aged 6 to 17, to a math test.
The results show no appreciable difference between left-handed and right-handed students in the case of simple math problems. When it comes to more complex questions, however, left-handed students seem to have a significant advantage. Does this mean they are smarter? Well, something like that.
Differences in the brains of lefties and righties: what is the advantage of the former?
A useful hypothesis to explain the difference in the tests is that left-handedness goes hand in hand with some surprising differences in brain architecture. Left-handed users would therefore have a more developed corpus callosum – the bundle of fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain – than right-handed users.
Hence Sala’s hypothesis to interpret the difference in test results: “One possibility is that the stronger connection between the two hemispheres allows the left-handed subject to have stronger spatial abilities, and we know that spatial abilities are related to mathematics because mathematics is often conceptualized across space.”
So if you’re among the lucky left-handed users, and gamers too, here are some tips on how to choose a left-handed mouse. Other human studies also show that we are still evolving.
Giuseppe Giordano