Contralateral ear dominance weakens higher in the auditory pathway

Evidence

Activity at all investigated stages of the auditory system appeared to be more closely related to changes in sound level for stimuli presented at the contralateral ear. This is in good agreement with the anatomy and with previous investigations suggesting that auditory information crosses to the contralateral hemisphere in the lower brain stem followed by ipsilateral signal propagation towards AC (e.g., Langers et al. 2005 ). … However, in the present study, the degree of lateralization differed considerably between regions, being particularly pronounced in the IC of the brain stem and rather weak in the posteromedial and anterolateral sections of HG. … In fact, in stark contrast to the IC, changes in sound intensity were highly predictive of signal changes in HGpm irrespective of the ear of entry, pointing towards strong interhemispheric connections in the upper stages of the auditory system. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2643

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in physiology-to-perception mechanisms and cross-dominance patterns like ocular dominance.