Are You Left-handed?

Do you know why you are left-handed? 

Did you know that around ten percent of the people are left-handed?

Did you know that for LGBTQ+ people that the percentage is around twelve percent?

online polls

In the world around ten percent of the people are left-handed but around twelve percent are LGBTQ+

Why is that, no one knows! But it goes deeper than being left-handed it goes to the whole alphabet soup of ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, and other leaning disorder!

6 Main Scientific Insights on Left-Handedness from 2025

In 2025, research on left-handedness made progress; here are the main insights.

Psychology Today

By Sebastian Ocklenburg, Ph.D.

December 28, 2025

Key points

• In 2025, several studies have advanced knowledge about left-handedness.
• Key insights included the importance of connections in the brain for handedness.
• Moreover, a link between left-handedness and neurodiversity was shown.
• Also, left-handers are more successful than right-handers ins ports like fencing and table tennis.

It is so very interesting that there seems to be linkages between LGBTQ+. left-handiness, and neurodiversity!

1. Brain connectivity may be the key to understanding the left-handed brain

For many decades, scientists have tried to find out which brain areas differ between left-handers and right-handers, with limited success. A large-scale neuroimaging study from 2025 revealed widespread statistically significant associations between handedness and brain connectivity across the whole brain. Left-handedness showed strong links to motor networks in different parts of the brain, as well as a strong association with the limbic network, which is highly relevant for emotions (Tejavibulya and co-workers, 2025). This suggests that differences in brain connectivity are a key factor distinguishing the brains of left-handers and right-handers.

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3. New insights into the genetics of left-handedness

A synthesis of recent findings on the genetics of left-handedness published in 2025 suggested that genes involved in early development of the brain are crucial for left-handedness (Ocklenburg and co-workers, 2025). The most striking finding was that across studies, many genes associated with so-called tubulins were shown to be relevant for handedness. Tubulins are a group of proteins that previously did not play a major role in research on left-handedness. They are relevant for different processes in brain development, highlighting the importance of early processes in the brain for left-handedness.

4. Left-handedness is more common in neurodiverse and neurodivergent people than in the general population

A secondary meta-analysis integrating data on left-handedness and its association with various conditions across hundreds of studies found that autism, ADHD, and dyslexia were linked to an increase in left-handedness compared to the general population (Packheiser and co-workers, 2025). This suggests that left-handedness is more common in neurodiverse and neurodivergent people than in neurotypical people.

Did you notice, "...found that autism, ADHD, and dyslexia were linked to an increase in left-handedness compared to the general population..."

And this is where it gets interesting , digging into it even more, the NIH's National Library of Medicine, PubMed reported in,

Elevated rates of autism, other neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diagnoses, and autistic traits in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

Natural Communication

By Varun Warrier 1,✉, David M Greenberg 1,2, Elizabeth Weir 1, Clara Buckingham 1, Paula Smith 1, Meng-Chuan Lai 1,3,4, Carrie Allison 1, Simon Baron-Cohen 1,✉

2020 Aug 7

Abstract

It is unclear whether transgender and gender-diverse individuals have elevated rates of autism diagnosis or traits related to autism compared to cisgender individuals in large non-clinic-based cohorts. To investigate this, we use five independently recruited cross-sectional datasets consisting of 641,860 individuals who completed information on gender, neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diagnoses including autism, and measures of traits related to autism (self-report measures of autistic traits, empathy, systemizing, and sensory sensitivity). Compared to cisgender individuals, transgender and gender-diverse individuals have, on average, higher rates of autism, other neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diagnoses. For both autistic and non-autistic individuals, transgender and gender-diverse individuals score, on average, higher on self-report measures of autistic traits, systemizing, and sensory sensitivity, and, on average, lower on self-report measures of empathy. The results may have clinical implications for improving access to mental health care and tailoring adequate support for transgender and gender-diverse individuals.

So there is something going on in our brain! Body and Mind Healthcare writes in their article "Clinical News: Autism-Gender Diversity Link Confirmed" that...

Gender and autism:

The five datasets together include 641,860 people, mostly adults; 30,892 have autism and 3,777 identify as gender diverse. The majority of the data — from about 514,000 people — came from an online survey conducted as part of a 2017 British television documentary about autism. (Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge and the new study’s lead investigator, led the collection of those data.)

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For all five datasets, autism diagnoses are more common among gender-diverse individuals than among their cisgender peers.

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Gender-diverse people also report, on average, more traits associated with autism, such as sensory difficulties, pattern-recognition skills and lower rates of empathy — or accurately understanding and responding to another person’s emotional state. And they are five times as likely to suspect they have undiagnosed autism as cis people are, based on one dataset of 1,803 people whose survey included this question.

Research is ongoing and one of the tools that is being used is AI to look for brain patterns and the findings are interested.

Machine learning of large-scale multimodal brain imaging data reveals neural correlates of hand preference

Neuroimage

 Chormai 1, Yi Pu 2, Haoyu Hu 3, Simon E Fisher 4, Clyde Francks 5, Xiang-Zhen Kong 6

Neuroimage

2022 Nov 15

Abstract

Lateralization is a fundamental characteristic of many behaviors and the organization of the brain, and atypical lateralization has been suggested to be linked to various brain-related disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. Right-handedness is one of the most prominent markers of human behavioural lateralization, yet its neurobiological basis remains to be determined...

The brain is incredibly complex, and the more we learn, the more we realize that we are only scratching the surface of how it works.

One thing to always remember: there are most likely several reasons or causes behind these patterns, and handedness, neurodiversity, and LGBTQ+ identity may be just one piece of the larger puzzle of human variation.