Changes in hand preference in the context of mental or brain abnormalities?

[fbenoit]

I’d like to ask a question about observing unintentional changes in hand utilization and preference.

I’m 27 years old and have been right hand dominant for my entire life hitherto. About 7-8 months ago I started noticing that my left hand seemed to be spontaneously becoming more dexterous. At first I didn’t pay much attention or thought to the matter but as this has persisted and I notice more often that my automatic preference for reaching and engaging with objects seems to have shifted to the left I’ve become increasingly concerned. It doesn’t seem to be a complete shift in dominance; I still do things like write and cut vegetables with my right hand. Nor has there been any loss of function in the right, only an increase in preference and function in the left which can make doing things feel somewhat awkward.

Concurrently to this time, which has also coincided roughly with a change in living environment and being unemployed, I know I’ve been experiencing hallmarks of depression and have noticed my cognition seems slower and generally less concrete than usual while I have been more prone to feeling disoriented and unfocused. For about 4-5 months I’ve also been experiencing regular headaches, almost always localized to my left temple area and sometimes extending backwards in discomfort or with facial tightness and tension – generally these have been 4-5 on a pain scale, enough to definitely be present and annoying, but on a couple occasions rating up to 10. It may be completely unrelated but I also twice awoke in the middle of the night recently and noticed that, though this wore off within a couple minutes, the vision in my left eye seemed to be tinted much darker than my right. Occasionally I’ve also recently noticed that I seem to have an increased amount of saliva.  

In the context of all of these I began to worry that there could be some kind of organic damage happening in my brain; that I could be developing a neurodegenerative disorder, schizophrenia, a brain tumor or experiencing so called “silent” strokes. I studied just enough neuroscience when I was in college to be frighteningly self-convinced there could be lesioning taking place in my corpus callosum or frontal areas.

I took all of these concerns to my GP and he was puzzled but didn’t seem to make much of them, said I was probably just hyper-attuned to my body and on a runaway train of noticing things and adding up assumptions... which I readily admit could very well be the case. He said he didn’t expect anything to show up but would schedule a “therapeutic” CT scan, prescribed me antidepressants if I wanted them and recommended I see a therapist for depression. He said the hand preference thing, the primary reason for my concern, he’s never heard of before.

Obviously I’m not a doctor, and I can accept if I’m just depressed and over concerned and thinking into things, but it seems so strange to me that a non-dominant hand should spontaneously gain function. I’d really like to ask a specialist here if this is something I should be concerned about?  Is it worth looking at with a CT scan?

Thanks for any and all help with this.