Latest news with #JulianPackheiser
Fox News
10-05-2025
- Health
- Fox News
Left-handed people could be at higher risk for some neurological disorders: study
Left-handedness and certain neurological disorders could go hand-in-hand, a new study revealed, though the researchers and others acknowledged potential limitations. While about 10% of people in the world are left-handed, people with autism are 3.5 times more likely to have the trait, according to an international team of researchers that analyzed data from over 200,000 individuals. The study, published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, indicated that left- and mixed-handedness also appear more often in people who have diagnoses such as schizophrenia, autism and intellectual disability. Mixed-handedness refers to a situation in which people may use their left hand for a certain task and their right hand for others, according to psychology experts. This is slightly different from ambidexterity, which is the equal use of both hands. "The key takeaways of this study are that alterations in hand preference from the norm (i.e., right-handedness) are associated especially with psychiatric and psychological conditions that affect the language system (e.g., dyslexia or schizophrenia) or affect neurodevelopment through an early age of onset (e.g., autism or ADHD)," lead author Dr. Julian Packheiser told Fox News Digital. He is a researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. "Correlation doesn't imply causation — and being left-handed does not mean someone will develop autism or schizophrenia." Not all neurological conditions showed a link to people's dominant hand. Depression and dyscalculia (a math learning disability), for example, showed no meaningful difference in hand preference compared to control groups, the study found. The researchers also determined that "atypical handedness" may be associated with long-term linguistic symptoms like stuttering and dyslexia. "In most people, the dominant side of their brain is typically where speech, language, logical thought processing and hand preference is located," Dr. Earnest Lee Murray, a neurologist with West Tennessee Medical Group, told Fox News Digital. He was not involved with the new study. "People who are left-handed or ambidextrous often don't have such a dominant one-sided brain — rather, the key portions of language can be divided between both sides," Murray also said. The study also examined the likelihood of atypical handedness in clinical populations, or groups of people diagnosed with a specific set of health conditions compared to a control population. "We suspected that left- and mixed-handedness could be associated with disorders whose symptoms are related to language," said Packheiser in a press release about the study. "Language, like handedness, has a very one-sided location in the brain, so it stands to reason that the development of both and their disorders could be linked." The researchers also considered other factors that could come into play, such as the age at which a person might exhibit symptoms. It appears that the earlier a disorder's symptoms emerged, the more frequently researchers saw cases of left- and mixed-handedness. The researchers hypothesized that left- and mixed-handedness could be associated with diseases that occur very early in life, because the dominant hand is determined at a very early age – possibly even before birth. In the womb, thumb-sucking at 10 weeks' gestation is heavily linked to which hand will be preferred later in life, they noted. The connection could help experts potentially understand the way brains are organized and how they develop. "The study has implications when understanding ways of finetuning the neurorehabilitation of patients with one-sided brain conditions, such as stroke, multiple sclerosis or traumatic brain injury," Murray said. Jonathan Alpert, a Manhattan-based psychotherapist and author, said the study was "interesting," though he emphasized its limitations. "Correlation doesn't imply causation — and being left-handed does not mean someone will develop autism or schizophrenia," Alpert, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital. "Handedness is just one of many factors that can be associated with neurological traits, and these findings should be interpreted with caution to avoid unnecessary alarm or stigma." Alpert called for more research to understand the relationship, if any, between handedness and mental health. Lead author Packheiser agreed the results are "purely correlational." "We have no causal evidence that developing a psychiatric disorder linked to language or neurodevelopment causes a change in handedness, or whether changes in handedness cause any disorder," he told Fox News Digital. "Individuals from the general public should therefore never be alarmed if their child prefers to use the left hand," the researcher said. "But given the rise of mental disorders in the population, it is important to better understand them."
New York Post
07-05-2025
- Health
- New York Post
Study finds surprising new link between lefties, autism and schizophrenia
Need a hand? An estimated 10% of people in the world are left-handed — and suffer from a societal bias than spans back centuries. Now, a new study published in the journal Psychological Bulletin has more bad news for people who prefer humanity's less popular hand. New research shows lefties are more likely to have psychotic disorders. Suriyawut – The comprehensive meta-analysis found that individuals with early-onset disorders characterized by language impairments — such as autism, schizophrenia and dyslexia — are significantly more likely to be left-handed or ambidextrous compared to the general population. Previous studies have shown that people who are left-handed or ambidextrous are disproportionally likely to have these disorders, but the reasons behind this phenomenon have been unclear — until now. 'We suspected that left- and mixed- handedness could be associated with disorders whose symptoms are related to language,' lead author Dr. Julian Packheiser. a researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, said in a press release. The study emphasizes that this association is particularly strong in disorders that manifest early in life and involve language difficulties. In contrast, conditions that develop later in life, such as depression, do not exhibit this link. 'Language, like handedness, has a very one-sided location in the brain, so it stands to reason that the development of both and their disorders could be linked,' Packheiser said. The study emphasizes that this association is particularly strong in disorders that manifest early in life and involve language difficulties. andriano_cz – For much of history, being left-handed was viewed not just as unusual but as outright devilish. In fact, in Latin, the word 'sinister' means left. Throughout medieval Europe, left-handed people were often associated with witchcraft, devil worship, or moral deviance. This bias persisted well into the 20th century, with many children forcibly trained to use their right hands in school, sometimes through physical punishment. In certain parts of the world — such as India and other parts of Asia — it is considered 'rude' to eat with your left hand, as it is reserved for 'unclean' tasks, further reinforcing a sense of 'wrongness.' Modern neuroscience has added more nuance to the picture. While some studies do suggest that lefties are more likely to have psychotic disorders, other research has linked left-handedness to enhanced creativity and spatial reasoning. Being left-handed is also a known advantage is many sports, such as baseball, tennis and boxing. Some reportedly famous lefties include Barack Obama, John McCain, Benjamin Franklin, Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DaVinci, Justin Bieber and the Boston Strangler.
South China Morning Post
06-02-2025
- Health
- South China Morning Post
Do you touch your face a lot? You might be stressed, say researchers
Published: 5:45am, 7 Feb 2025 Have you ever wondered how often you touch your face every day? Research from a German psychologist at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, says it is an average of 50 times an hour – or up to 800 times a day. Some of these touches, says Julian Packheiser, serve a practical purpose, such as to fix your hairstyle or rub tired eyes. But most are done for no apparent reason. Packheiser is conducting research into the health effects of touch and made his findings public in the German magazine Spektrum Psychologie. He explains that unconscious facial touching could serve an important function. 'According to recent theories, unconscious facial touching serves to reduce stress and helps regulate our emotional balance.' Touching your face calms the brain and helps restore inner balance. Photo: Shutterstock Touch in general is known to promote good health. It can alleviate anxiety, reduce sadness, lessen pain and even lower blood pressure .
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
A touchy subject: Why can't we keep our hands off our faces?
Have you ever wondered how often you touch your face every day? Research from a German psychologist at the Ruhr University in Bochum says it's an average of 50 times an hour – or up to 800 touches a day. Some of these touches, says Julian Packheiser, serve a practical purpose, such as to fix your hairstyle or rub tired eyes. But most are done for no apparent reason. Packheieser is conducting research into the health effects of touch and made his findings public in the magazine Spektrum Psychologie. Touching reduces stress He explains that unconscious facial touching could serve an important function: "According to recent theories, unconscious facial touching serves to reduce stress and helps regulate our emotional balance." The psychologist explains that touch in general is known to promote good health. It can alleviate anxiety, reduce sadness, reduce pain and even lower blood pressure. This not only applies to contact with others: in a randomized controlled study conducted in 2021, researchers at the Goethe University Frankfurt found that both touching others and touching oneself before a stressful situation had an effect on the stress levels of the participants. Both those who were touched by others and those who touched themselves had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood afterwards than the third group of untouched people. Incidentally, not touching your face would sometimes be better – keyword pathogens – but it's not that easy: "Actively avoiding touching your face to reduce infections requires mental effort," write the Leipzig researchers. So we have to do it consciously. What role does the face play? The participants in the self-touching group did not always choose the face, some stroked their arm or placed their hands on their chest. Nevertheless, other research suggests that facial touching occurs particularly frequently in stressful or cognitively demanding situations, Packheiser explained. This is shown, for example, by a systematic review by a team of researchers from the Paul Flechsig Institute – Centre for Neuropathology and Brain Research at the University Hospital of Leipzig, which was also published in 2021. "Although there is still little research on self-touching, such evidence suggests that touching one's own face can alleviate stress." Joe Navarro, a former FBI behavioural analyst, explains in Psychology Today magazine that the reasons for this preference lie in the anatomy of our body. Our faces are particularly rich in sensitive nerve endings that are directly connected to the brain. These nerves – in particular the fifth (trigeminal nerve) and seventh cranial (facial nerve) nerves – enable touch on the face to reach the brain faster and more effectively than on other parts of the body. A gentle stroke across the cheek or a touch on the lips sends calming signals to the brain at lightning speed. This instant effect is crucial because we need quick relief, especially in stressful moments. Touching your face calms the brain and helps restore inner balance. It also gives others an indication of what is going on inside, whether someone is stressed and needs support, according to Navarro. "So the next time your partner or colleague is frequently touching their nose, feel free to ask if everything is all right," advises Packheiser.
