Left-Handed People Are Being Unnecessarily Excluded From Neuroimaging Research, Study Finds

By Matthew Warren In a world made for right-handed people, life can sometimes be frustrating if you are among the 10% or so who are “adextral” — that is, left-handed or ambidextrous. Now a new grievance can be added to the list. Brain imaging researchers are systematically excluding adextrals from participating in their studies, according to an analysis of recent research papers published in top neuroimaging journals. Yet there’s no good reason to exclude this population, say the authors — and in fact, the practice could be detrimental to research. The tendency to include only right-handed people in neuroimaging research stems from the finding that certain processes are represented differently in the brains of adextrals. In particular, while the left hemisphere of the brain dominates language processing in almost all right-handed people, in about 30% of adextrals this processing occurs predominantly in the right hemisphere (or both hemispheres). Handedness also influences how the brain represents sensation and movement of the hands. Many neuropsychologists have therefore avoided recruiting adextrals for fear of affecting their data. But Lyam Bailey and colleagues at Dalhousie University noticed that researchers were excluding adextrals from a range of studies unrelated to language or movement, even though there is little evidence that handedness influences other processes. So in their new paper, published in the European of Journal of Neuroscience, the team investi...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Brain Methods Source Type: blogs