Hemispheric Specialization, Handedness, and Laterality

Abstract

Until recently it was thought, perhaps somewhat simplistically, that a right-handed person was necessarily left-hemisphere dominant for language, and similarly a left-handed person was right-hemisphere dominant for language. Now it is known, from neuropsychological researches over the last 30 years, that this is not so and that the whole question of the relation between handedness and hemispheric specialization is highly complex and variable within certain limits. However, before we examine the relationship between cerebral function and handedness, let us look at these two behavioral processes separately.

The main theme to emerge from the foregoing facts is that there appear to be two modes of thinking, verbal and non-verbal, represented rather separately in right and left hemispheres respectively, and that our educational system, as well as science in general, tends to neglect the non-verbal form of intellect. What it comes down to is that modern society discriminates against the right hemisphere.

R. W. Sperry (1973)