What does Handedness have to do with Brain Lateralization (and who cares?
The same chap that identified a region of the brain specialized for language Paul Broca (Paul Broca) also suggested that a person’s handedness was opposite from the specialized hemisphere (so a right-handed person probably has a left-hemispheric language specialization). But the kick is: this is not a mirror correlation (that is, a majority of left-handers also seem to have a left-hemispheric brain specialization for language abilities). Tricky business, eh? For over 150 years, many researchers have been trying to figure out this robust-but-imperfect correlation between handedness and brain lateralization. We are still trying. WHO CARES? The primary historical reason that the hand-brain link was considered important and became a generally-accepted methodology, was because for nearly a century it was the only hint that a neurosurgeon had prior to surgery which hemisphere was specialized for language. Clinicians used handedness as a marker for brain lateralization until the Wada (sodium
