11 Facts About Doreen Kimura

Doreen Kimura was a Canadian psychologist who was professor at the University of Western Ontario and professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University.

Doreen Kimura was the founding president of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship.

Doreen Kimura was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and grew up in the village of Neudorf, Saskatchewan.

Doreen Kimura was finishing her final year of high school via correspondence while teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in Northern Manitoba when she applied to and won an entrance scholarship to McGill University in Montreal.

Doreen Kimura went on to earn bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from McGill.

Doreen Kimura conducted her doctoral research at the Montreal Neurological Institute under the supervision of neuroscientist Brenda Milner.

Doreen Kimura joined the faculty at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, in 1967, and remained there for the rest of her career.

Doreen Kimura died on February 27,2013, at age 80, in Vancouver.

Doreen Kimura demonstrated that right-handed subjects have a right-ear superiority for the reception of words and numbers, and left-ear superiority for the perception of melodies; she concluded that these superiorities must reflect the processing specializations of the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

Doreen Kimura was among the first researchers to use dichotic listening tests in her work, a non-invasive method for studying the lateral asymmetry of auditory processing in the brain.

Doreen Kimura studied healthy individuals, as well as patients with apraxia and aphasia, to draw conclusions about the neurological underpinnings of communication.