Recently, while sitting behind her husband on a motorcycle and looking at a map to guide him to a meeting, she confidently told him to “turn right” at a three-way intersection, even though the screen pointed to the left.
The mistake forced the couple to drive an extra five kilometers and arrive 20 minutes late. On the way home, Hong said, she endured his complaints the entire trip.
From childhood, Huang was often the target of bullying by classmates. In physical education class, when the class leader yelled “turn left,” he would only turn right. During the 18 years of school, the nickname “Huang Bei Samt” stuck with her.
She once tried to wear a ring on her right hand as a reminder, but when she forgot to wear it she would get confused again.
“Now I don’t give directions verbally, I just tap the driver a little on the shoulder to signal,” he says.
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User AX shows off his tattoos on his left and right arms to distinguish the directions in a photo shared in February 2026. Image from X/bearbubb |
Neuroscience refers to her condition as Left-Right Confusion (LRC). People with LRC can read maps and indicate directions through gestures, but struggle to quickly verbalize “left” and “right” or process spoken directions.
Kwok Tuan, 29, from Hong Yen Province, is facing similar problems and his friends call him a “broken compass”. Once at school he asked his parents to buy him a watch to wear on his left wrist to help reduce confusion.
But his most embarrassing memory is from the university’s military training program. When the teacher shouted “Turn right!”, Tuan turned left and accidentally hit the soldier behind him with a rifle. He repeated this mistake four or five times, for which the entire search was punished with a ring around the yard.
At his wedding in late 2024, when the MC invited him to put the ring on his bride’s right hand, Tawan took her left hand instead. After reminiscing, he blushed and almost put the ring on his left hand, making the guests laugh.
When he took his driving test in June 2025, the instructor told him to turn left at an intersection, but Tuan turned right instead.
“Almost 30 years into my life I still feel like a broken machine that cannot distinguish between these two main directions.”
Dr. Duan Van Phuc, vice president of Duc Giang General Hospital in Hanoi and former head of its neurology department, says that while there has been no major research on LRC in Vietnam, globally it is estimated to affect 15-18% of the world’s population.
The problem occurs when an area near the top of the brain, responsible for processing bodily sensations and spatial awareness, suffers damage.
“This is the main reason some people lose the ability to distinguish between right and left,” says Fok.
Neuroscientists say it could be a congenital abnormality or trauma from an accident. People who have this condition usually live with it for life.
But many people sometimes mix up the instructions even without brain damage, often due to mental stress or mental stress.
“Stress-related cognitive disturbances are temporary and usually disappear when a person’s mental state stabilizes,” says Phuc.
Professor Anike van der Ham of Leiden University in the Netherlands once explained that people rarely confuse up and down, but distinguishing between left and right is very difficult because the two sides are spatially coherent. Her 2020 study found that about 15% of people rated their ability as poor on the right-to-left scale.
A 2016 study by Professor Gerard Gormley et al., published in 2016 Canadian Medical Association Journal And based on a survey of 800 adults, found that 17% of women and 9% of men struggle with this problem. According to the researchers, determining direction requires a coordinated interaction between memory, language processing and visual-spatial reasoning.
Many people with LRC develop personal coping strategies, according to one survey VnExpress finds Some recognize their hands by moles or scars. Others use a simple but clever trick: holding the thumb and index finger in both hands, in an “L” shape with the hand pointing to the left.
Some constantly wear a ring or watch on one hand to help them remember.
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Truc An, from Ho Chi Minh City, has a tattooist mark her left hand and middle finger to help distinguish the directions. Photo by In |
But for Truc An, 28, in Ho Chi Minh City, that’s not always practical and has opted for a permanent solution: a heart tattoo on the middle finger of her right hand and a star on her wrist.
“When I’m typing, I see a heart on my fingers and know it’s my left hand,” he explains. “When I’m driving and I raise my hand, the star on my hand helps me orient myself.”
He says that since getting the tattoo, life has become “a lot easier”.
Saying it’s a real hardship, Gormley hopes people will be more knowledgeable about people with LRC, giving them enough time to double-check their decisions.
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