Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Structural and Functional Asymmetries in Humans

2020; Springer Nature; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-981-15-2549-0_3

2191-5318

José Afonso, Cristiana Bessa, Filipe Cabral Pinto, Diogo Ribeiro, Beatriz Moura, Tiago Rocha, Marcus Vinícius, Rui Canário-Lemos, Rafael Peixoto, Filipe Manuel Clemente,

Morphological variations and asymmetry

There is evidence that skeletal asymmetries in the bones of the upper limbs have been intimately related to right-hand dominance since the dawn of the genus Homo; this type of asymmetry is also believed to have occurred in Neanderthals [1]. An anthropological study of 780 Holocene adult humans has shown that modern humans present bilateral asymmetry in the length and especially in the diaphyseal breath of long bones (e.g., the femur) [2]. Furthermore, the authors found a systematic right-bias in all dimensions for the upper-limb bones and a slight left-bias in diaphyseal breadth and femoral length. In another anthropological study of 509 Holocene adult humans, Auerbach and Raxter [3] found contralateral asymmetries in both the clavicle and the humerus, with greater asymmetries observed in diaphyseal breath than in length. Furthermore, the authors state that the asymmetries in diaphyseal breadth could be related to variations in the physical activities practiced by the groups.