
What Left-Handedness Reveals About How the Brain Works (2014) - pseudolus
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/31/left-handedness-david-wolman/
======
yardshop
I've been teaching myself to be ambidextrous. It started a few years ago after
injuring my right elbow with lots of wood working, drilling and screwing and
sawing. I started trying to drill and drive screws with my left hand. It felt
very awkward at first, but after a few tries I started getting the hang of it.
I would put the drill back in my right hand and pay attention to the angles
and positions and then try to do that with my left hand. It takes a while to
build up that coordination, but it does happen.

After a while I was using my left hand so frequently that I actually started
getting the same injury in my left elbow and started going back to my right
hand again. For a while I could not squeeze hand clamps with my left hand. I
since have trained myself to notice when one or the other arm is getting sore
and switch, and haven't had these problems in a couple years.

I also had to switch to using mice with my left hand when my right wrist
started getting sensitive. I put two mice on my home and work computers and
would just use the left one when my right side was getting sore.

Last year I consciously started doing everything with my left side as often as
I do with my right: using forks and chop sticks, sawing, splitting wood with a
hatchet (using an axe is a both-sided thing and there is very little
difference which hand is on top). I haven't put the practice into writing with
my left hand yet, it's harder to get past the awkwardness of something I
expect to do so automatically. But I will keep working on it. And some things
I just can't do with the left hand like bass playing or gear shifting, unless
I want to move to England and get a custom guitar built!

------
benj111
So they didn't really answer the genetics question.

Both I and my partner are lefties, our child and the milkman aren't. Should I
be having a conversation ;)

------
carlhjerpe
I write with my right, use smartphone with left, left footed, lefty with
machinery, mouse in right, ballsports left, eat with fork left, spoon doesn't
matter. Not sure what to think of myself.

~~~
n0mad01
i've got a friend whose ambidexterity manifests itself that he can do
everything with both hands, although his left hand is less sensitive he
sometimes "forgets" to do things with his right hand, he spontaneously starts
something with one hand to switch in the meantime to the other.

------
cgriswald
Scissors is a bad measure given that many scissors have an inherent
handedness.

~~~
stevekemp
I have to say that buying proper left-handed (Fischer) scissors was life-
changing, when I moved out of home.

Finally, for the first time, I had scissors that actually worked.

~~~
aurelwu
I'm lefthanded, my well meaning parents bought be left handed scissors for
school not realizing that I for some reason use the right hand for scissors.
Combine that with a young me not being aware that it was left-handed and what
a difference it makes, and you get a small pupil being severly frustrated with
it for months until realizing that something is wrong.

------
roryrjb
"For Southpaws themselves — the affectionate term for lefties ", yeah maybe in
the US but not where I'm from. Anyway, I write left handed and hold a pool cue
left handed (and also I think I'm correct in saying this: I would hold a rifle
left handed), but in every other way that I can think of, I am right handed.
I've always thought that was weird, I mean at least compared to others. Anyone
else have similar experiences?

~~~
gabelerner
left:

\- write

\- pool cue

\- brush teeth

\- scissors

\- spoon

\- fork

right:

\- throw

\- punch

\- tennis/ping pong

\- knife

i've always seen it as left=precision, right=force for me

~~~
a_e_k
That's pretty close to how I do things and I've tended to view the dichotomy
similarly. To add to the comment, when batting I'm more comfortable right
handed and when kicking I prefer my right foot. I've also grown accustomed to
using scissors and mice right handed out of necessity (though one might also
argue that scissors frequently involve power). What's odd to me is that I
often don't know which hand I'm going to prefer for a task until I try it.

Reading this thread, it's interesting to see that this may actually reasonably
common. I don't think I've met anyone else who works this way before, and I
realize that this sub-thread is rather self-selecting. Still, it's an
existence proof that there's more than one of us.

------
EngineerBetter
Eating "right-handed" has always seemed irrational to me.

It dates back to medeival eating traditions when folks only had a knife -
therefore, it was held in the right hand as it was the primary and only
implement.

Fast forward to the present day, and the fork is the primary implement. Hence,
to my mind, it makes significantly more aense to hold the fork in one's
dominant hand.

~~~
coldtea
> _Fast forward to the present day, and the fork is the primary implement.
> Hence, to my mind, it makes significantly more aense to hold the fork in one
> 's dominant hand._

Well, depending on the country, that's what we do. Even right handed people
will switch the knife to the right hand to cut something and then get back to
eating with the fork on the right hand.

[https://www.thekitchn.com/survey-using-your-knife-and-
fork-1...](https://www.thekitchn.com/survey-using-your-knife-and-fork-166188)

~~~
tzs
I'm a right handed American, but apparently sort of use left handed European
style--I hold the fork in the right hand and the knife in the left hand, and
they stay that way for both cutting and conveying to mouth.

I say sort of because that says European style is tines down, and Wikipedia
tells me that tines down is used in that style even when using the fork to
lift something that isn't impaled on the fork, whereas I do the sensible thing
and flip to tines up for such tasks.

I do not understand either American style or European style with the fork in
the left hand, but maybe I don't eat anything that requires great knife
dexterity to cut at the table, so putting and keeping the knife in the less
dexterous hand seems the logical approach.

Are there common foods that are sufficiently challenging to cut at the table
that the knife needs to be in the dominant hand?

The cutlery question that I want an answer to is why the heck do my steak
knives have a sharp tip? I don't stab my steaks. I cut them, which would be
fine with a rounded tip. The only stabbing my steak knives ever do is my hand,
by accident, when I'm loading or unloading the dishwasher.

PS: I was completely unable to recall or figure out what my knife and fork
style was while reading this thread. I had to go to the kitchen and actually
get a knife and fork, and actually go through the motions with them in hand to
see what I did.

------
gumby
I was in a meeting with someone from Japan and was astonished to see him take
notes with his left hand (generally a taboo in Japan). He was taking notes in
English during a meeting in English. Later I saw him writing in
Japanese...with his right hand! I assume he was born left-handed and had it
mostly wrung out of him in school and at home, but perhaps the English
teachers couldn't care less. He exhibits no speech impediment.

(My own kid exhibited the "English teachers couldn't care less" phenomenon,
though not in handedness: he was required to use only a fountain pen for
schoolwork, except in English where pencils were allowed (they still used the
German letterforms). His handwriting was clear as a bell except in English
where it was barely legible -- even to me, a native English speaker!).

------
lolcat5e
Does anyone else experience a "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG" emotion when watching
someone doing an action with different handedness from the way you would do
it? I get very uncomfortable watching someone cut a loaf of bread the 'wrong'
way for example.

~~~
Yetanfou
Not at all but that might be related to the fact that I'm left-handed and as
such have learnt to do many things in both left- and right-handed fashion
simply because many tools are made for right-handed use, this goes from simple
things like scissors to chain saws and rifles. Learning to use them in either
fashion makes takes away the idea of 'doing it wrong'. It also makes me more
flexible in that I have no problems swapping sides when the circumstances call
for it.

------
virtualwhys
Left: write, eat, brush teeth

Right: throw

Both: tennis, ping pong, hit a baseball, play pool, play football (not sure if
that counts).

I went to high school with a guy who was the same, but in reverse (write
right, throw left).

My dad's 100% left handed, so I assumed I just copied him -- since my hand
writing is so poor I always thought of myself as a learned left hander, but
according to the chart in the article I'm actually more left handed than right
handed, strange.

Well, I tell people I'm right handed since that's my dominant hand in sports.
Definitely wouldn't strike anyone out throwing left handed :)

------
tomkinson
I did the test. I was 4-4-2 so basically mixed handed, but really more so I
don't care about top hand on a spoon, knife or broom, so really more like 4
left, 1 right, 5 don't care. So as mixed handed as it get cause I throw a mean
right handed spiral too. And boy do I relate way more with left handers, all
because I prefer highly to write with my left even though if I need to my
right will do.

------
equalunique
Righty for the most part, but I have trained myself to use my left for mouse
operation when at the computer.

------
mbfg
"The Anglo-Saxon lyft means weak or broken"

poor Lyft.

yes, i agree it's odd that that was what i took out of the article.

------
jcoffland
I'm mostly right-handed but learned to use a few things left-handed from my
left-handed dad.

------
topmonk
I'm left handed and have been studying Chinese for about 6 months, for 2 hours
per day. Out of curiosity, I decided to learn writing Chinese characters with
my right hand (also because I thought it was cool to be able to write English
with my left hand while writing Chinese with my right hand at the same time).
I'm in my forties for additional context.

I've discovered the following things:

* I've always had a moderate degree of social anxiety. But, after a couple of months, I noticed a substantial calming effect when I wrote with my right hand. This bled over into my life in general, and I am much less socially anxious, and more easily able to face anxiety rather than run from it when I need to.

* I able to write Chinese very quickly with my right hand but still not as quickly as my left hand, even though I have had far less practice writing with my left hand. I also discovered I can write English with my right hand nearly as well as Chinese, even though I didn't practice this.

* I recently booted up a videogame called "Getting over it", which requires intense hand/eye coordination. I haven't played the game in over a year, and did it exclusively with my left hand at the time, played for about 30 hours, I think, giving up around half way through (to the part with the very steep ladder after the boxes, where the infamous "shortcut" is, for the people who have played the game). To my amazement, I was able to get to the exact same place with my right hand after only playing for an hour or so! I'm also was able to use chopsticks with my right hand with little practice, as well as brush my teeth quite competently after very little effort.

* After the 2 month mark, I sometimes slipped into a mental state where I could "watch" my right hand write the characters, as if I wasn't in control, and some other entity was controlling it. Now, I'm able to do induce my mind to do the reverse, watching my left hand write, as if controlled by some other entity. I don't know what to make of this.

* In general I feel smarter in some ways. I've noticed a big spike in new ideas for solving problems that I don't think I would have had before. I do a lot of programming on project ideas that I find interesting, and I've found I'm a lot better able to see when a plan of attack isn't working, and abandon it before falling down a rabbit hole, whereas before I would lose focus on the general task, and spend far too much time working on approaches to solving a problem that weren't working. I suppose this could be the placebo effect, or an effect of learning a new language in general. But I thought it was interesting.

\---

So, one thing I got out of the above is that it _seems_ as though learning
coordinated, dexterous movements are all that is needed to perform well at a
variety of tasks with one's non-dominant hand, even if one has little or no
practice at a specific activity. I also have the feeling that I've "woken up"
a part of my brain that was dormant before.

Also, here is probably a dumb thought, as I am not very knowledgeable about
AI, so take this for what it's worth. Based on the above, I had a thought
about how the brain works. I was thinking about a hierarchy of neural
networks, where the top level networks could switch the inputs of the lower
ones.

It seems that if the brain worked similarly to how neural networks work, I
would have to have some sort of an ability to do this, or how could I have
been able to do so well at the "Getting over it" videogame, as well as write
English so well with hardly any practice at the two activities?

It also fits well with the idea of using memory as planning, or creating a
blank NN to model something, and putting it in place of the outside world as
inputs to two already trained NN's. That NN could be trained to manipulate
both so that the same results would be received as when they were running
against the outside world. In this way, the connected NN could begin to model
the real world and plan strategies without having an outside NN to work with.

~~~
benj111
>I thought it was cool to be able to write English with my left hand while
writing Chinese with my right hand at the same time

So can you? Reliably?

Btw, havent you made a tactical error? English is left to right, so kind of
optimsed for righties. Chinese is top to bottom so more ambidextrous? Perhaps
phase 2 could use Hebrew for the left hand? English for the right?

Ps. But yes very cool :)

~~~
topmonk
> So can you? Reliably?

I just tried this. I'm used to looking at what I'm writing when I write, so I
can't seem to do this with my eyes open.

If I close my eyes and prime myself to write one individual word, that means
approximately the same thing, such as "是" and "am", I can do it. If I try to
write two words with different meanings, such as ball and "椅" I cannot. My
right hand starts to work and then just stops, and I have the feeling of
confusion arise.

> Btw, havent you made a tactical error? English is left to right, so kind of
> optimsed for righties. Chinese is top to bottom so more ambidextrous?
> Perhaps phase 2 could use Hebrew for the left hand? English for the right?

I suppose so, but I wasn't motivated enough to relearn how to write English
with my right hand just for this experiment. As far as learning to write
Chinese with my right hand, I figured it wouldn't really add much to the
effort, since most of my time was trying to remember the damn characters
versus actually writing them.

I guess I'll just have to live with two ink stained patches regularly
appearing on the outsides of both of my hands :)

------
zxcb1
The expression "Right hand" is ambiguous.

~~~
winchling
Yes, another person's left hand is on the right hand side of the observer. I
remember finding this labelling convention confusing as a child.

However it does makes sense given that we very readily 'map' our own bodies
onto those of others. Is this the very reason why we become right-handed: are
we are copying the majority? True or not, it would be even more confusing the
other way around.

