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©The Author(s) 2026. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatry. Jan 19, 2026; 16(1): 111010
Published online Jan 19, 2026. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i1.111010
Published online Jan 19, 2026. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i1.111010
Non-right-handedness and psychiatric disorders: A synthesis of epidemiological, genetic, and neurobiological evidence
Qing-Qing Wang, Jie-Si Wang, State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Science and Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Qing-Qing Wang, College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 101408, China
Qing-Qing Wang, Zhong-Sheng Sun, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Zhong-Sheng Sun, HIM-BGI Omics Center, Hangzhou Institute of Medicine, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hangzhou 310022, Zhejiang Province, China
Zhong-Sheng Sun, Beijing Children’s Hospital, National Center for Children’s Health, Beijing 100054, China
Author contributions: Wang QQ and Wang JS conceptualized and designed the study and created the artwork; Wang QQ, Sun ZS, and Wang JS supervised and made critical revisions; Wang QQ conducted the literature review, the analysis and interpretation of data, and drafted the original manuscript; All authors prepared the draft and approved the submitted version.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Jie-Si Wang, PhD, State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Science and Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 16 Lincui Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, China. wangjs@psych.ac.cn
Received: June 23, 2025
Revised: July 29, 2025
Accepted: October 23, 2025
Published online: January 19, 2026
Processing time: 193 Days and 19 Hours
Revised: July 29, 2025
Accepted: October 23, 2025
Published online: January 19, 2026
Processing time: 193 Days and 19 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Despite prior studies on non-right-handedness and psychiatric disorders, this review uniquely integrated epidemiological, genetic, and neurobiological evidence. It revealed higher non-right-handedness prevalence in schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, autism spectrum disorder, etc. It is linked to early developmental disruptions, genetic variants, and abnormal brain lateralization. Bidirectional causality is proposed. The review offered a novel framework and highlights fu