Human Hands-on Wonders

 Sir Isaac Newton once said that the thumb alone would be enough to convince him of God’s existence. Our hands, and especially our thumbs, are remarkably sophisticated pieces of body machinery. It’s right to regard them with wonder

Structurally, the hand is one of the most intricate parts of the human body. Almost never still (with fingers flexing at least 25 million times in a lifetime), the hand is both good news and bad news within wellbeing acting as a diagnostic tool—and as a transmitter of infection. Hand holding meanwhile may bring health benefits. Here's more about your hands...

Intricate

Each hand has 27 bones: eight in each wrist, five in each palm and fourteen in the fingers. Your two hands account for more than a quarter of the bones in the body.

Each hand is controlled by 35 muscles; seven are required to control the index finger alone. No muscles live in the fingers themselves, however, they lie instead in the forearm and palm. Tendons tether finger bones to their muscles.

Your fingertips are packed with thousands of nerve endings, detecting heat, touch and pain.

 

Incessant

From the first time you gripped the obstetrician’s fingers upon emerging from the womb, your hands have rarely been still, apart from when asleep. They respond continually to a stream of electrical signals from the brain, telling them to move.

The part of the brain driving movement is known as the motor cortex, and a quarter of it is devoted to controlling the muscles of the hands even though they’re a relatively small part of the body. No other creature has such a large proportion of their brain dedicated to controlling their hands.

More than mechanical movements (for example, pushing, pulling, lifting or twisting), hands are often used to embellish speech. One study showed that the most popular public speakers use an average of 465 hand gestures during their talks.

 

Informative  

Once we realized the importance of the TED speaker’s body language, we decided to look for specific nonverbal patterns that the top TED Talks had different from the bottom TED Talks. One thing became quickly clear:

The more hand gestures, the more successful the Talk. There was a direct correlation between the number of views on a TED Talk and the number of hand gestures.

The bottom TED Talks had an average of 124,000 views and used an average of 272 hand gestures during the 18 minute Talk. The top TED Talks had an average of 7,360,000 views and used an average of 465 hand gestures—that’s almost double! By the way, Temple Grandin, Simon Sinek and Jane McGonigal topped the hand gesture charts with over 600 hand gestures in just 18 minutes.

Why do we think this is? Our hands are a nonverbal way to show and build trust–studies have found that when we see someone’s hands, we have an easier time trusting them. Also, when someone uses their hands to explain a concept, we have an easier time understanding them. Speakers who use hand gestures are speaking to their audience on 2 levels–verbally and nonverbally.

Bottom Line: To be a good speaker, let your hands do the talking.