Faculty Bibliography

'We're not looking for a gene for handedness or a gene for schizophrenia,' he said. 'We're looking for subtle relationships.' The gene affects the ways that neurons communicate with one another, he said, but its mechanisms still need to be studied. 'Handedness has a genetic basis, but like other complex traits - height, weight - it is complex,' he said. 'It's not a single gene that leads to it. There's a strong environmental component, too. It's a very tricky problem.' 'I can hold the pencil properly in my left hand, but I don't have the co-ordination to write,' he told me. 'It looks like I'm holding the pencil properly, but I am unable to make any letters.'

Because left-handedness has been seen as a key to the complex anatomy of the brain, researchers continue to look for -- and debate -- links to many other conditions, including immune disorders, learning disabilities and dyslexia, reduced life expectancy and schizophrenia

'We're not looking for a gene for handedness or a gene for schizophrenia,' he said. 'We're looking for subtle relationships.' The gene affects the ways that neurons communicate with one another, he said, but its mechanisms still need to be studied. 'Handedness has a genetic basis, but like other complex traits - height, weight - it is complex,' he said. 'It's not a single gene that leads to it. There's a strong environmental component, too. It's a very tricky problem.' A colleague's husband, Anthony Gentile, told me that though he was always left-handed, he was taught to write with his right hand - though he can form the letters, he could never learn to hold the pencil correctly in that hand. 'I can hold the pencil properly in my left hand, but I don't have the co-ordination to write,' he told me. 'It looks like I'm holding the pencil properly, but I am unable to make any letters.'

Dr. [Clyde Francks], who is now at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands, recalls that the discovery made headlines and attracted a great deal of attention, the more so because this gene was also found disproportionately in people with schizophrenia, even though none of these connections are simple or well understood. 'We're not looking for a gene for handedness or a gene for schizophrenia,' he said. 'We're looking for subtle relationships.' The gene affects the ways that neurons communicate with one another, he said, but its mechanisms still need to be studied. Dr. Daniel Geschwind, a professor of human genetics, neurology and psychiatry at University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, is interested in the connections between language and handedness, and the ways that handedness can help us understand the evolution of the human brain. 'Handedness has a genetic basis, but like other complex traits -- height, weight -- it is complex,' he said. 'It's not a single gene that leads to it. There's a strong environmental component, too. It's a very tricky problem.' A colleague's husband, Anthony Gentile, a fund manager who is 41 and grew up outside Cincinnati, said that though he was always left-handed, he was taught to write with his right hand -- though he can form the letters, he could never learn to hold the pencil correctly in that hand. 'I can hold the pencil properly in my left hand, but I don't have the coordination to write,' he said. 'It looks like I'm holding the pencil properly, but I am unable to make any letters.'

[...] a child who asks a parent this question may be worrying over how and when to bring it up

[...] he was avoiding things in school that made him uncomfortable -- interactions on the bus, jostling on the playground. [...] missing school intensifies both the academic pressures and the social pressures that are waiting when a child returns, setting up a dangerous cycle in which the more you're absent, the more you want to stay out

[...] I have no trouble remembering the name of the bully in my sixth-grade class. Many antibullying programs work by activating those bystanders so that all the children in a classroom or all the children in a school learn to recognize bullying, to call it by its name and to invoke adult help when necessary.

The researchers identified several large families in which enuresis was inherited following an autosomal dominant pattern -- that is, if either parent has a history of bed-wetting, a child has a 50 percent chance of inheriting it. Children who develop secondary enuresis -- that is, they are fully dry for six months, then begin wetting again -- may have infections, constipation (an overly full bowel can put pressure on the bladder) or a variety of other problems, including behavioral and psychological issues

'Nurse,' he said, 'it's an appendix!'' 'One of the things we're struggling with in pediatrics is we've become too dependent on the CT scan,' he said. 'It's become very helpful in terms of identifying appendicitis, but it translates to radiation.' 'I always find it sort of amazing that we've known about appendicitis for so long, and in 2010 there's still so much that's controversial,' said Dr. Catherine Chen, a pediatric surgeon and an assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School