Left Brain - Right Brain
6 Main Scientific Insights on Left-Handedness from 2025
In 2025, research on left-handedness made progress; here are the main insights.
Posted December 28, 2025 Reviewed by Lybi Ma
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.
- Left-handers are also more successful than right-handers in sports like fencing and table tennis.
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.
Read my detailed blog post about this study here.
2. Left-handers have a clear advantage in some types of sport.
Left-handers have an advantage over right-handers in antagonistic sports like fencing or table tennis. This was shown by a study published in 2025 (Simon and co-workers, 2025) that investigated the left-hander advantage in sports through data from more than 15000 elite athletes. For fencing and table tennis, left-handers were especially overrepresented among very successful athletes, showing that they have an advantage over right-handers in these types of sports.
Read my detailed blog post about this study here.
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.
Read my detailed blog post about this study here.
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.
Read my detailed blog post about this study here.
5. Left-handedness is common in many animals.
Scientists used to think that left-handedness is something that only humans show, but this idea is wrong. A 2025 overview of studies that investigated pawedness and similar constructs in animals showed that out of 172 investigated animal species, only about 28 percent did not show handedness. In the remaining 72 percent of animal species, left-handedness was observed, showing that it is common in animals (Ströckens and co-workers, 2025).
Read my detailed blog post about this study here.
6. The link between left-handedness and creativity may be an urban myth.
A review article and meta-analysis on handedness and creativity published in 2025 integrated the findings of studies on handedness and divergent thinking, and also assessed whether left-handers are more often found in creative jobs (Morgan and co-workers, 2025). The findings showed that left-handers were not better in creative thinking, making it likely that the idea that left-handers are more creative is an urban myth.
Facebook image: Nuva Frames/Shutterstock
References
Morgan, O., Zhao, S., & Casasanto, D. (2025). Handedness and creativity: Facts and fictions. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 32(6), 2472–2506. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-025-02717-2
Ocklenburg, S., Mundorf, A., Peterburs, J., & Paracchini, S. (2025). Genetics of human handedness: microtubules and beyond. Trends in genetics : TIG, 41(6), 497–505.
Packheiser, J., Borawski, J., Berretz, G., Merklein, S. A., Papadatou-Pastou, M., & Ocklenburg, S. (2025). Handedness in mental and neurodevelopmental disorders: A systematic review and second-order meta-analysis. Psychological bulletin, 151(4), 476–512.
Simon, T., Loffing, F., & Frasnelli, E. (2025). Prevalence of left-handers and their role in antagonistic sports: beyond mere counts towards a more in-depth distributional analysis of ranking data. Royal Society open science, 12(9), 250303.
Ströckens, F., Schwalvenberg, M., El Basbasse, Y., Amunts, K., Güntürkün, O., & Ocklenburg, S. (2025). Limb preferences in non-human vertebrates: A new decade. Laterality, 1–46. Advance online publication.
Tejavibulya, L., Horien, C., Fredericks, C., Ficek, B., Westwater, M. L., & Scheinost, D. (2025). Functional Connectome Correlates of Laterality Preferences: Insights into Hand, Foot, and Eye Dominance across the Lifespan. eNeuro, 12(7), ENEURO.0580-24.2025.
