If you’ve ever noticed that you tend to tilt your head to the right when you’re struggling to hear someone or something, then there’s a very good reason why this happens instinctively…
It turns out that we actually hear better in our right ears, a new study has confirmed. In fact, your right ear is not only better equipped for listening but actually helps you make sense of noises more easily, the Telegraph reports.
And it’s all to down to the way our brains interpret sounds, say researchers from Auburn University in the US.
Sound entering your right ear is processed by the left side of your brain, the part that controls speech, language development and parts of your memory.
As a result, scientists have concluded that turning your right ear to a sound lets more information travel to the part of your brain that’s best equipped to interpret it.
The team concluded this after getting 41 participants between the ages of 19 and 28 to wear headsets recall a list of numbers played into their right or left ear. And, lo and behold, they were able to remember more when information went through their right ear.
While this phenomenon has previously been seen in children, this is the first time that research has shown its effect in adults.
‘Conventional research shows that right-ear advantage diminishes around age 13, but our results indicate this is related to the demand of the task,’ said researcher Dr Aurora Weaver while presenting the team’s findings at the annual Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.
Anyway, next time you find yourself struggling to hear what on earth someone is saying to you, you know which way to turn…
