left-handers are different, again

A BBC report says that left-handed people use the opposite sides of their brain for looking at and processing images.

The researchers showed right-handed people use the right hemisphere of their brain to focus on the whole of an image – for example a forest.

But when it comes to focusing on the detail within an image – for instance individual trees in a forest – then they use their left hemisphere.

For left-handers the opposite is true.

This apparently demonstrates that left-handers view the world entirely differently from right-handers, in addition to the common differences in language and spatial orientation that have been found before. I’m not sure exactly what this means at the end of the day, but its interesting in a general how-the-brain-works kind of way (especially since I’m left-handed).

Of course the article is also kind enough to point out that left-handers are prone to “allergies, auto-immune diseases, depression, drug abuse, epilepsy, schizophrenia and sleeping disorders.” Yay.

(I got it from Mirabilis.ca.)