Doreen Kimura

Doreen Kimura (February 15, 1933 – February 27, 2013) was a Canadian psychologist who was professor at the University of Western Ontario. Kimura was recognized for her contributions to the field of neuropsychology and later, her advocacy for academic freedom. She was the founding president of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship.

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

Kimura went on to earn bachelor's, master's, and doctoral (in 1961) degrees from McGill. She conducted her doctoral research at the Montreal Neurological Institute under the supervision of neuroscientist Brenda Milner (co-supervised by Donald O. Hebb). She 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. Her 1993 monograph, Neuromotor Mechanisms in Human Communication, summarized her research in this area over the prior two decades. she suggested that cognitive and behavioural differences between males and females can be attributed to the influence of sex hormones on brain development. This work has been met with criticism by those who assert that gender differences are better explained by the influences of society and culture. In a special issue of the journal Canadian Psychology, Kimura argued against affirmative action for women in academia, calling it "demeaning" to women.

Awards and honours

1985: Award for Distinguished Contributions to Canadian Psychology as a Science, Canadian Psychological Association 2000: Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy, Simon Fraser University

Books Neuromotor mechanisms in human communication (1993), Oxford: OUP Sex and Cognition (2000), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press