3 ms·

Hmm...but most of the required fine dexterity is in your non-dominant hand. I wonder if some right-handed brain real estate is being repurposed for your left ha

• InitialLastName 9y ago
  This is something many people think, but isn't necessarily true. Yes, the left hand fingering requires dexterity, but the dynamics, timing, and much of the tone come from very fine movements of the right hand. If you think about the bow as a lever, tiny movements at the fulcrum make enormous differences to the forces applied in the middle or at the end. So there's less finger motion, but more fine adjustment happening at the right hand than many people think.
• hmahncke 9y ago
  Right brain controls left hand (the brain brain is weird that way) so the dexterity required for fingering in the left hand is governed by plasticity and over-representation in the right brain.
  • jawilson2 9y ago
    Right, but there is also a lot of evidence (or at least it looked like there would be when I was in the field 5+ years ago), that it isn't that simple, and there is also considerable ipsilateral motor control in the cortex as well. This would make sense for activities that require coordination between both hands, so that, in the motor cortex, we wouldn't have the case where "the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing." So, if there is MORE coordination required than in a typical cortex, maybe non-coordinated tasks become clumsier? I have no idea. Maybe musical people tend to spend less time doing non-musical athletic things, and aren't as graceful? Maybe both, or something else? Sounds like a cool imaging project for a neuroscience or BME grad student.