The more familiar phrase is the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. This familiar version has come to mean that in any company, business or familar organisation communication is so bad that people don’t know what the others are doing.

The origin of the familiar phrase is given as:

…. let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth

in Matthew 6:3 of the King James Version of the Bible.

The unfamilar phrase was prompted by attending a WACIDOM musical recital in Holy Trinity Church, Market Gate, Warrington (UK) on Saturday 11th October 2025. The concert was given by Isabel Thompson and Grace Harman (trumpets) and Lauren Turner (piano). The penultimate piece was introduced by Grace who said that she had always liked playing both the piano and the trumpet and had arranged Louis Armstrong’s Basin Street Blues for both instruments.

To the surprise of many in the audience. Lauren, the pianist, and Isabel the other trumpeter walked off the platform, Grace walked over to the piano with her trumpet in hand, sat down at the piano and proceeded to play the piece with the trumpet in her right hand and the piano with the left, Not only was she playing with both hands, but her right foot was using the right pedal and her left foot was operating her Bluetooth Tablet page turner pedal. The audience were astonished!

On chatting with Grace briefly after the session ended, she said she had started learning the piano aged 8 years and then the trumpet aged 10 years. And not wanting to choose which to continue with chose both. For those intrigued by the neuroscience of how any brain could perform such an extraordinary feat, Grace said she didn’t know, she just learned to do it.

There are at least two insights to be gained from her performance. First that given a passion for some activity and the commitment to mastering it, (some) human brains are capable of incredible feats, The second and equally important insight is that there is no need to explain how the brain does it or give it a neuro-divergent label, although she could legitimately be assigned the neuro-divergent label,.