ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the possible neurobiological bases of hand preference, because if hand preference is related to creativity than the genesis of the hand preference might help explain the relationship between preference and creativity. It also discusses the possible brain mechanisms that might account for differences in creativity between people who have right- and left-hand preferences. Many cultures discourage the use of the left hand. Even in the United States and England, countries that are noted for their tolerance of diversity, the scientific term for left-handedness is sinistral, which means evil. Many people think that the hemisphere that is dominant for mediating language determines handedness. Coren (1995) studied the relationship between handedness and divergent thinking and found that left-handed people are better at divergent thinking than are right-handed people. When presented with a problem, however, divergent thinking might depend on the ability to recruit networks that have a substantially different architecture than those usually recruited in response to this problem.
