Question

-Explain the “right ear” advantage and why it exists

-How fo the Wada test and split brain studies identify which areas of the brain are involved in prosopagnosia?

Answer 1

1. For good reasons, the auditory system of humans evolved with a right-ear advantage(REA) as speech processing required more of the brain. The Dichotic listening test is a psychological test commonly used to investigate selective attention within the auditory system and is a subtopic of cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Usually dichotic listening tests show a right-ear advantage for speech sounds. Dichotic listening experiments have shown that different sorts of input show different ear preferences. Subjects with left-hemispheric language lateralization, which possibly constitute more than 95 percent of the population, are more accurate in reporting items arriving at the right ear than items arriving at the left ear when the input is verbal. This tendency is commonly referred to as the right-ear advantage (REA) for verbal stimulus. Conversely, the majority of people have a left-ear advantage (LEA) for tasks involving the recognition of music or environmental sounds.

According to Structural Theory by Kimura (1967), Right Ear is connected to the language dominant left hemisphere of the brain and the left ear to the right hemisphere through the contralateral pathways. She claims that contralateral pathways are more preponderant than the ipsilateral pathways which constitute the link between the ear and the hemisphere on the same side.