Abstract
In the present study, we measured spontaneous hand preference in a “natural” grasping task. We asked right- and left-handed subjects to put a puzzle together or to create different LEGO© models, as quickly and as accurately as possible, without any instruction about which hand to use. Their hand movements were videotaped and hand preference for grasping in ipsilateral and contralateral space was measured. Right handers showed a marked preference for their dominant hand when picking up objects; left handers, however, did not show this preference and instead used their right hand 50% of the time. Furthermore, compared to right handers, left handers used their non-dominant hand significantly more often to pick up objects in ipsilateral as well as contralateral space. Our results show that handedness in left handers does not extend to precision grasp and suggest that right handedness for visuomotor control may reflect a universal left-hemisphere specialization for this class of behaviour.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by grants to M.A.G. from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Canada Research Chairs Program, and a CIHR postdoctoral fellowship to C.L.R.G. Authors would like to thank Dr. Haitao Yang for technical support.
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Gonzalez, C.L.R., Whitwell, R.L., Morrissey, B. et al. Left handedness does not extend to visually guided precision grasping. Exp Brain Res 182, 275–279 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-1090-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-1090-1