A Straight nasal septum and right unilateral hypertrophied inferior nasal turbinate, a very rare anatomical phenomenon, in skilled language translators: Relevance to anomalous dominance, brain hemisphericity and second language acquisition

Abstract

Research on second language acquisition has recently focused on the concept of brain hemisphericity. Since the nasal cycle indexes brain hemisphericity and a deviated nasal septum itself affected by structural brain dominance may prevent nasal cycling, we investigated the presence of septa! deviation and inferior turbinate hypertrophy in 11 expert translators. We found that 10 of the 11 subjects demonstrated both a straight nasal septum and right unilateral inferior turbinate hypertrophy, an extremely rare anatomical phenomenon. The one-tailed binomial test was extremely significant (p <. 0000001). This anatomical phenomenon, which can be noninvasiveiy checked in less than 30 seconds may predict excellence in second language acquisition.

Key Words:

• nasal septum
• nasal cycle
• brain hemisphericity
• anomalous brain dominance
• second language acquisition