Handedness

Published: Jan. 12, 2016, 2 p.m.

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1/2 Million people in Scotland are discriminated against every single day. You cannot tell how by their gender, their skin colour or their religion. But watch them write their name or use a pair of scissors and you will see that they are left handed.

Pennie Latin explores what makes us right or left handed and how our handedness affects who we are as individuals.

In the past those who were not right handed were feared or shunned and many people today will still remember being forcibly retrained to use their right hand. So to find out how handedness controls how we do almost everything, BBC Radio Scotland along with Abertay University set up a "handedness lab" to test how competent we are at some very simple tasks with our non-dominant hand.

Simple tasks are one thing. But what if, for example, you are a left handed pianist who would much prefer to play the more dexterous parts of the music with your dominant hand? Pennie, a right handed piano player, meets Christopher Seed, a left handed piano player to play the worlds very first left handed piano.

Whichever side you fall, left or right handed, this episode of Brainwaves will affect every single one of us.

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