Cerebral dominance in spatial hearing and working memory abilities in adults with normal hearing sensitivity

Abstract

Abstract Background Cerebral dominance refers to the biological description of the brain, where one cerebral hemisphere is dominant over the other in certain cerebral functions. There is scanty literature on cerebral dominance and its impact on auditory spatial processing and working memory, which is explored in the study. Methods A total of 45 participants with normal hearing were divided into three groups of 15 participants. The groups were categorized based on scores obtained on the alert scale of the cognitive style checklist as the bilateral dominant, left dominant, and the right dominant group. The spatial hearing was assessed using interaural time difference (ITD), the interaural level difference (ILD), and virtual acoustic space identification (VASI) tests, whereas the auditory working memory abilities were tested using forward span, backward span, ascending digit span, descending digit span, and 2n back tests. Results MONOVA results indicated that there is no significant main effect of cerebral dominance on all auditory working memory tests. In spatial hearing, although ILD and ILD thresholds were not influenced by cerebral dominance, the main effect of cerebral dominance was seen on VASI accuracy scores. Post-hoc analyses of VASI scores showed that the bilateral dominant group demonstrated significantly better spatial perception scores compared to the left and right dominant groups, with latter groups showing similar performance. Conclusions While ITD and ILD tests fall short of revealing cerebral asymmetry, VASI’s power in capturing cerebral dominance effects makes it a valuable tool in spatial processing assessment. The study’s findings highlight the need for assessing cerebral dominance, before administering spatial hearing tests.