At last, the benefits of being left-handed are confirmed

A new study has found that lefties' brains could be associated with better verbal skills, among other talents. I always knew I was special

Being a leftie has a genetic component, is linked to better verbal skills and is associated with a lower risk of Parkinson's disease, according to a new study published in the journal Brain. Unfortunately for Guardian readers, that's leftie in the handedness sense, not political. Fortunately for me, I'm both.

The study is a fascinating one, using thousands of brain scans and hundreds of thousands of sequenced genomes to look for associations between genes, brains and hands. It found that, in left-handers, the left and right hemispheres had stronger links in the regions associated with language, which could correlate with greater language ability.