Giftedness and "palm-reading"

There is a tradition in Europe of palm reading, whereby by a woman (usually) gazes into one's hand and tells of one's life, past, present and future.

Personally, I have never had any doubt that it was doubtful, however, a recent piece of research has thrown up an interesting correlation between the form of the hand and the form of the brain, above it.

It has been observed that there is a strong inverse correlation between the ratio of the index finger to the ring finger and a talent for maths. By this I mean that a SHORT index finger in relation to the ring finger, indicates a brain well-equipped for maths. On the other hand, a hand in which the ratio of index finger to ring finger is about one (they are of similar length) indicates more of a verbally inclined brain.

What is the cause of this relationship? Testosterone. Lots of it, in the womb, makes your index finger short and your brain biased towards visuo-spatial/mathematical tasks. Little of it, and relatively more estrogen, allows the brain to progress towards a verbal type brain.

Usually, this means that a boy will have the maths bias and a girl the verbal bias - but this is by no means universal. There are maths woman and verbal men - as shown by their hands.

So, is your child a maths child or a verbal child? To find out how their brain is actually biased all you have to do is look at their hands and see how long or short the index and ring fingers are. It is that simple.

(If you would like to read about Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and six months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, and Tiarnan, sixteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)