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Accepted manuscript

Transmission of human handedness: a reanalysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2026

Rony Karstadt
Affiliation:
School of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University
Chloe Shiff
Affiliation:
Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, Stanford University
Tomer Oron
Affiliation:
School of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University Safra Center for Bioinformatics, Tel Aviv University
Nadav Ben Nun
Affiliation:
School of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University Safra Center for Bioinformatics, Tel Aviv University
Yoav Ram*
Affiliation:
School of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University Safra Center for Bioinformatics, Tel Aviv University Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University
*
Corresponding author: Yoav Ram, yoavram@tauex.tau.ac.il)

Abstract

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Human handedness results from the interplay of genetic and cultural influences. A gene-culture co-evolutionary model for handedness was introduced by Laland et al. (1995), and the present study generalizes that model and the related analysis. We address ambiguities in the original methodology, particularly regarding maximum-likelihood estimation, and incorporate sex differences in cultural transmission. By fitting this extended framework to existing familial and twin datasets, we demonstrate that accounting for criterion shifts significantly improves model fit and parameter estimation accuracy. We find stronger maternal than paternal effects on handedness, with daughters exhibiting greater sensitivity to these effects than sons. We provide an open-source Python implementation of the model, which is a robust platform for comparing gene-culture models and applying them to diverse datasets.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press.