Dichotically-stimulated ear differences in musicians and nonmusicians.

A dichotic listening task involving violin melodies was given to 32 musicians and 32 nonmusicians. The former group demonstrated a right ear superiority, while the latter performed better with the left ear. Right ear scores distinguished between the groups, but left ear scores did not. Additionally, the left-handed subjects in both groups showed smaller amounts of ear asymmetry than their right-handed counterparts. The results were interpreted as demonstrating that musicians mainly use the left hemishpher to process musical stimuli, while nonmusicians use the right. It is thought that as a person becomes more musically adept, increasing use is made of a left hemisphere sequential analytic mechanism. The apparent functional symmetry of left-handers could also be due to the confounding effect of having two distinct sub-groups within this population, i.e., true left-handers, and those with the cortical organization of right-handers.