Left Brain, Right Brain Dominance Tied To Ear Preference In Cell Phone Users

When it comes to using your cellphone, are you a righty or a lefty?

A provocative new study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit suggests that the brains of cellphone users show subtle differences based on which ear users typically use to listen to their phones: people who tend to listen using the right ear usually have brains in which the left hemisphere dominates—and vice versa.

In general, the brain's left hemisphere seems to specialize in “processing language and producing speech, carrying out sequential processing of information, focusing attention, and inhibiting negative emotions,” according to the website of the Dana Foundation, a brain research organization. In contrast, the right hemisphere seems to specialize in “simultaneous processing of information, attending in a broad or diffuse way, forming and using spatial maps, and expressing intense emotions.”

What does that mean in simple English? There's some evidence that so-called "left-brain-dominant" people are more analytical while "right-brain-dominant" people are more creative, study author Dr. Michael Seidman, director of the hospital's division of otologic and neurologic surgery, told The Huffington Post in an email.

So does that mean you can make inferences about your intellectual and emotional tendencies by noting whether you’re right- or left-eared when it comes to cellphone use? And can noting others’ cellphone use habits enable you to gauge their intellectual and emotional tendencies?

Alas, it’s not quite that simple.

“I do not believe I can really comment on emotional differences,” Dr. Seidman said when asked about the study, adding that the evidence to support differences between right-brain and left-brain people is “limited.” But if you're left-brain-dominant and right-handed, “you could argue that you might process better in the right ear,” he said, acknowledging that this was speculation but that it “makes sense.”

No matter what, the study has some important implications. For one thing, it may point to a lower-cost, less invasive way to “map’ the brains of neurological patients, Dr. Seidman said in a written statement released b the hospital. Currently, patients’ brains are mapped using the so-called Wada test, in which an injected anesthetic is used to deaden parts of the brain.

The study also adds to the body of evidence supporting the safety of cellphones. It showed that about 70 percent of cellphone users habitually listen to their phone with their right ears. If cellphones did increase the risk for cancer, Seidman said in the statement, malignancies of the head, brain and neck would be far more common on the right side. But, he said, that’s not the case.

The study, based on the results of an online survey completed by more than 700 people, is scheduled to be presented in San Diego on Feb. 26 at a meeting of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology.

Keep clicking for some fascinating TED talks on cognitive science

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Charles Limb: Your brain on improv

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We think that at least a reasonable hypothesis is that, to be creative, you have to have this weird dissociation in your frontal lobe. One area turns on, and a big area shuts off,so that you're not inhibited, so that you're willing to make mistakes, so that you're not constantly shutting down all of these new generative impulses.

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We think that at least a reasonable hypothesis is that, to be creative, you have to have this weird dissociation in your frontal lobe. One area turns on, and a big area shuts off,so that you're not inhibited, so that you're willing to make mistakes, so that you're not constantly shutting down all of these new generative impulses.

comments(107)

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Comments

[Brianh1903]

9 minutes ago (10:28 PM)

Most likely, the reason there is a correlation to which ear you hold your phone up to and which brain hemisphere is dominant, is because right handed people tend to be left brained and vice versa. Since I am right handed, If both of my hands are free, I tend to use my right hand to pick things up. This includes phones. To cross over to the left ear with my right hand would be silly. It has nothing to do with "ear dominance", but hand dominance. This article is pointless.

[mamacat]

09:20 PM on 04/06/2012

What about us people who are more or less ambidextrous?

[candlesmp]

05:15 PM on 03/31/2012

And this is supposed to be news? I learned that in one of my preliminary neuroscience courses 10 years ago about hemispheric dominance and auditory input. Thanks for re-creating the wheel.

[Raymond Coutray]

06:47 PM on 03/07/2012

seems like it would have more to do with what hand you write with. Hold the phone with the unused hand and write down things with the other.

[Megan Mae]

01:08 AM on 02/28/2012

I prefer this TED video on the topic.
http://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain.html

Not to say that Charles Limb didn't give a fantastic talk..

[Megan Mae]

01:02 AM on 02/28/2012

I use both depending on, well, nothing in particular. So does that mean I have a super brain?

[visconti24]

03:49 PM on 02/27/2012

I am right handed but my hearing is much better on my left ear than on my right so I use my left ear to talk on the phone. Duh...

[ChaCubed]

09:45 PM on 02/26/2012

I am totally right-handed, to the point that, if I have to do something while on the phone, I either have to put it down or use the speaker.

The old days of trying to hold a phone under my chin while doing something else were not the "good old days" for me: especially using a public phone! Yuck!!!!!

[Me atlast]

03:13 PM on 02/26/2012

I'm right handed, but I use my left when I'm on the phone. I think that's because I paint right handed, and if I'm painting and on the phone at the same time that's the only way I can manage it. Funny thing though, I can't talk to someone in the room and paint at the same time, but I have no problem with it on the phone.

[SeaOtterBaby]

04:11 PM on 02/26/2012

I agree. I usually try to have my right hand free for writing. No need to write? Dunno. I will have to pay better attention. My husband is right handed, but bats, golfs, and throws with his left hand. He is a photographer and uses his left eye to look through the view finder. I just handed him the phone and asked him pretend to talk; he used his right hand, right ear. Go figure.

[ms.understood]

09:07 PM on 02/26/2012

i, too, am right handed but prefer to use the phone with my left. it would make sense that people would use the ear in which their writing hand would be free, but this study is nonetheless interesting.

[Lfwngcons]

02:22 PM on 02/26/2012

Okay so did they take into account which hand is dominant?? That's a major flaw if they didn't.

[bigbubba90210]

05:52 PM on 02/26/2012

Exactly. And ditto if they didn't take into account whether or not the hearing level of the non-preferred ear was less than the hearing level of the preferred ear.

[PattyMuller]

02:08 PM on 02/26/2012

I use my right ear because I am right handed. I hold the phone with my right hand. It's as simple as that.

[MichaelAKD]

01:40 PM on 02/26/2012

i am just one person nonetheless i am left handed, right brain centered according to research and because of the way the world is made, for right handed people, those tools everyone uses ona daily basis are biased in their design accordingly. i use my cell phone in my right ear, not because of any physical inclination but because i do things with my left hand while using my right hand to hold the phone to the ear which is closest. it doesn't say anything about the methodology here so the researchers may have taken into account, should have taken into account that the vast majority of human created devices are designed assuming use of the right hand. seriously if you are right handed you don't even think about it and why would you. how many times for example do you ever hear someone tell another that for example "why are you wearing your watch on the wrong hand?" for me all the time, and it isn't on the wrong hand just another example of how easily we take things for granted as "normal" in this life and why i have my doubts about the results of this particular study.

[Lfwngcons]

02:23 PM on 02/26/2012

Actually the majority of people that are left handed are also left brain dominate, it is only a fraction that are not. There are also right handed people that are right brain dominant but the that fraction is very very small.

[zeebro1]

09:46 AM on 02/26/2012

I use my left had to hold the phone to my (left) ear to free up my dominant hand for writing, etc...that's the relationship plan and simple.

[ChicagoBlackRainbowWomen]

02:18 AM on 02/26/2012

Well I'm a lefty, but also an artist, so does that mean I use my middle brain?

[Ravi Abunijad]

12:36 AM on 02/27/2012

Heh.

And as you typed that question, the ridiculous "study" imploded.

[ChicagoBlackRainbowWomen]

12:58 AM on 02/27/2012

Yep

[Willow712]

12:19 AM on 02/26/2012

I am left handed, listen on my cell phone at my left ear. However, I am right eyed dominant, and I bowl, shoot a rifle and used to smoke with my right hand. So I guess i am all messed up. LOL

[MichaelAKD]

01:42 PM on 02/26/2012

twins separated at birth, i'm messed up too.