Kimura was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and grew up in the village of Neudorf, Saskatchewan.[3] 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.[4]
Kimura went on to earn bachelor's, master's, and doctoral (in 1961) degrees from McGill.[3] Woodburn Heron supervised her master's thesis.[5] She conducted her doctoral research at the Montreal Neurological Institute under the supervision of neuroscientist Brenda Milner (co-supervised by Donald O. Hebb).[2][3][5]
Kimura joined the faculty at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, in 1967, and remained there for the rest of her career.[3] In 1974, she established the Neuropsychology Unit at London’s University Hospital (now London Health Sciences Centre).[2]
She had one daughter, named Charlotte Thistle Archer.[3] Kimura died on February 27, 2013, at age 80, in Vancouver.[3]
Work
Kimura's early work, starting in the 1960s, assessed differences in the language and music processing capabilities of the two hemispheres of the brain.[6][7] 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.[2][6][7] 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.[2][5]
Kimura studied healthy individuals, as well as patients with apraxia and aphasia, to draw conclusions about the neurological underpinnings of communication.[2][8][9] Her 1993 monograph, Neuromotor Mechanisms in Human Communication,[10] summarized her research in this area over the prior two decades.[2]
Kimura's later interests included the relationship between sex and cognition and promoting academic freedom.[2][3] In a number of publications, including her 2000 book Sex and Cognition,[11] she suggested that cognitive and behavioural differences between males and females can be attributed to the influence of sex hormones on brain development.[12][13] This work has been met with criticism by those who assert that gender differences are better explained by the influences of society and culture.[14] In a special issue of the journal Canadian Psychology, Kimura argued against affirmative action for women in academia, calling it "demeaning" to women.[15]
^ abcdefghi"Dr. Doreen Kimura". Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour & Cognitive Science. Archived from the original on 2019-04-21. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
^ abKimura, Doreen (1961). "Cerebral dominance and the perception of verbal stimuli". Canadian Journal of Psychology. 15 (3): 166–171. doi:10.1037/h0083219. ISSN0008-4255.
