Emotion Is Reversed in Left-Handers' Brains | Psychology Today

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Malleable Mind
How experiences shape the brain and mind
by Daniel Casasanto, Ph.D.

Emotion Is Reversed in Left-Handers' Brains

Motivation in the brain depends on handedness.
Published on May 3, 2012 by Daniel Casasanto , Ph.D. in Malleable Mind

Daniel Casasanto, Ph.D., is a cognitive neuroscientist who studies how experience with the physical and social world shapes our brain and minds. He is a psychology professor at the New School. more...

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The way we use our hands may determine how emotions are organized in our brains, according to a new study led by Geoffrey Brookshire, a Ph.D. student in my lab at the New School for Social Research, published in PLoS ONE [1]. Motivation, the drive to approach or avoid physical and social stimuli, is a basic building block of human emotion. For decades, scientists have believed that approach motivation is computed mainly in the left hemisphere of the brain, and avoidance motivation in the right hemisphere [2]. Brookshires study challenges this idea, showing that a well-established pattern of brain activity, found across dozens of studies in righthanders, completely reverses in left-handers.
Approach motivation in right- and left-handers.

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The study used electroencephalography (EEG) to compare activity in participants right and left hemispheres during rest. After having their brain waves measured, participants completed a survey measuring their level of approach motivation, a core aspect of our personalities. In right-handers, stronger approach motivation was associated with greater activity in the left hemisphere than the right, consistent with previous studies. But lefthanders showed the opposite pattern: Approach motivation was associated with greater activity in the right hemisphere than the left. A new link between motor action and emotion: The Sword and Shield Hypothesis

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Why do Easterners remember the forest while Westerners remember the trees? Motivation in the brain depends on handedness.

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Most cognitive functions do not reverse with handedness. Language, for example, is mainly in the left hemisphere for the majority of right- and lefthanders. So why would the wiring of motivation depend on handedness? We predicted this hemispheric reversal because we observed that people tend to use different hands to perform approach- and avoidance-related actions. Approach actions are often performed with the dominant hand, and avoidance actions with the nondominant hand [3]. In centuries past, sword fighters approached their enemy wielding the sword in their dominant hand, and avoided injury by raising the shield with the nondominant hand. This sword and shield pattern is evident in more ordinary motor actions, as well. Imagine picking an apple from a tree. Youre likely to pull the fruit toward you with your dominant hand (an approach action) and push away the branch with your nondominant hand (an avoidance action). In right-handers, approach motivation is computed by the hemisphere that controls the right hand, and avoidance motivation by the hemisphere that controls the left hand. This may be no mere coincidence. Neural circuits underlying motivation may be functionally related to circuits that control hand actionsemotion may be built upon neural circuits for action, either in evolutionary or developmental time. By showing that the right hemisphere computes approach motivation in left -handers, the same hemisphere that controls the left hand, Brookshires results provide the first evidence for the link we propose between action and emotion, which we call the Sword and Shield Hypothesis. Motivation is

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