Today's fact:
Most people in the world are right handed.
Wait, I thought this fact was about brains, you say. Well, it is. The reason most people are right-handed has to do with the functions of the right and left hemispheres.
I know popular culture teaches that the "right brain is for creativity and the left brain for analysis." Well, actually, this is largely false. The hemispheres of the brain do appear to specialize, but not really that way.
The left brain is responsible for the movement of the right side of the body, visual processing from the right half of your field of vision, and processing of language (listening, speaking, reading, and writing).
The right brain moves and receives senses from the left side of the body, and it is largely responsible for spatial reasoning and pragmatics, social skills, reading emotions, recognizing faces, and things like that.
Now you can see why being left-handed is strange. Most people choose from an early age to write with their right hand because the language centers of the brain can easily communicate with that hand (left brain controls right hand). But lefties are using the hand controlled by the other side!
Many lefties are still lateralized like right-handers—that is, their left brain houses the language centers. When these people write, the motor message has to go from the left side of the brain to the right side of the brain and then down to their left hand (the message has an extra step to take).
But some lefties have different lateralization—either both sides of the brain are involved in language, or the right side is more involved in language. So in conclusion, left-handers are cool!
Take these statements with a grain of salt, though. Just because a part of the brain specializes in something doesn't mean that other parts of the brain don't participate at all.
Please enjoy this cool case study done to show the different functions of the right and left hemisphere. Although the reporter (and even the researchers, to some extent) are simplifying the situation, it is a good bit of evidence for hemispheric specialization.
My English teacher in 8th grade could write with both hands....and also backwards (including cursive) with her left hand. I wonder if the ability to do "mirrored writing" has something to do with the different hemispheres controlling the opposites sides of the body.
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