Richards, G;
Tan, DW;
Whitehouse, AJO;
Chris McManus, I;
Beaton, AA;
Hickey, M;
Maybery, MT;
... Lawson, L; + view all
(2022)
A longitudinal examination of perinatal testosterone, estradiol and vitamin D as predictors of handedness outcomes in childhood and adolescence.
Laterality
10.1080/1357650X.2022.2109656.
(In press).
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Abstract
The developmental origins of handedness remain elusive, though very early emergence suggests individual differences manifesting in utero could play an important role. Prenatal testosterone and Vitamin D exposure are considered, yet findings and interpretations remain equivocal. We examined n = 767 offspring from a population-based pregnancy cohort (The Raine Study) for whom early biological data and childhood/adolescent handedness data were available. We tested whether 18-week maternal circulatory Vitamin D (25[OH]D), and testosterone and estradiol from umbilical cord blood sampled at birth predicted variance in direction of hand preference (right/left), along with right- and left-hand speed, and the strength and direction of relative hand skill as measured by a finger-tapping task completed at 10 (Y10) and/or 16 (Y16) years. Although higher concentrations of Vitamin D predicted more leftward and less lateralized (regardless of direction) relative hand skill profiles, taken as a whole, statistically significant findings typically did not replicate across time-point (Y10/Y16) or sex (male/female) and were rarely detected across different (bivariate/multivariate) levels of analysis. Considering the number of statistical tests and generally inconsistent findings, our results suggest that perinatal testosterone and estradiol contribute minimally, if at all, to subsequent variance in handedness. Vitamin D, however, may be of interest in future studies.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A longitudinal examination of perinatal testosterone, estradiol and vitamin D as predictors of handedness outcomes in childhood and adolescence |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/1357650X.2022.2109656 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/1357650X.2022.2109656 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
| Keywords: | Estradiol, Handedness, Prenatal development, Testosterone, Vitamin D |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > UCL Medical School UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10154005 |
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