Serving and Leadership

How we perceive sound can be altered by whether we are using our left or right hands while listening according to researchers at Georgetown University Medical Centre.

The results -- which were presented at Neuroscience 2012 -- are being attributed to the different language processing abilities of the left and right hemispheres of the brain which control the right and left sides of the body respectively.

To investigate the phenomenon neurologist Peter Turkeltaub and his team disguised rapid- and slow-changing sounds within background noise. Participants were asked to indicate whether they could hear the noise by pressing a button using alternately their right hand then their left hands.

Those responding with their right hand heard the rapidly changing sounds more often than when using their left hands while the slowly changing sounds were heard more often when using the left hand.

"The left hemisphere likes rapidly changing sounds, such as consonants, and the right hemisphere likes slowly changing sounds, such as syllables or intonation," explains Turkeltaub on the GUMC website.