Cerebral laterality and the study of alcoholism

This paper suggests that the strategy of studying individuals at high risk to develop alcoholism by comparing, for example, sons of alcoholic fathers with sons of nonalcoholic fathers might not control for handedness or for patterns of cerebral laterality. In our sample of alcoholic men, at least 50% of the men left-handed or having a left-handed first-degree relative had an alcoholic father, versus only 26% of the right-handed men not having a left-handed first-degree relative. If generalized to nonalcoholic individuals, these data suggest that a larger proportion of the sons of alcoholic fathers either would be left-handed or would have a left-handed first-degree relative, and might have an anomalous pattern of cerebral dominance. Furthermore, several findings associated with being at high risk for alcoholism have also been associated with left-handedness or with left-hemisphere dysfunction.