Handedness and the cerebral representation of speech

Abstract

Hand preferences vary not discretely but continuously and the continuum of preference is closely and reliably linked with a continuous roughly Normal distribution of differences between the hands in skill. Questions about handedness can be usefully formulated in terms of the distribution of differences in skill and in terms of the theshold or criterion which divided those likely to be classified as right handers from those likely to be classified as left handers. A theory of the origin of hand preferences suggests that three factors are involved. The first in non-genetic accidental variation in the development of the two sides of the body in all bilaterally symmetrical species showing limb preferences. The second in a systematic bias to the right hand in man, probably linked with the tendency for the left hemisphere to serve speech. The third is socio-cultural factors affecting the expression of sinistrality. An explanation of the relation between hand preference and cerebral speech laterality requires the assumption that in some individuals the factor biasing speech to the left hemisphere is absent. This would imply that the bias is not a universal species character but that it is subject to genetic variation. Making the simplest possible further assumptions that in the absence of bias, the laterality of handedness and of cerebral speech are independent and each governed by chance, it is possible to account for the distribution of right and left handers with dysphasias following right and left unilateral cerebral lesions.