Kissing that is
Keep to the right for a perfect kiss
The best way to kiss to ensure good initial lip-to-lip contact has been discovered by a neuroscientist who has secretly observed kissing couples in three countries.
If you are kissing someone this Valentine's Day, you should lean your head to to the right before planting the smacker.
This head-turning conclusion has come from Prof Onur Gunturkun of Bochum University in Germany, who watched 124 kissing couples at airports, railway stations, parks and beaches across the United States, Germany and Turkey.
To ensure that his data were easy to interpret, he counted only the first kiss and ignored people who were encumbered with mobile telephones, which could induce a bias in his results.
His survey of 13- to 70-year-olds showed that twice as many people turned their heads to the right to kiss as to the left. He points out today in Nature that in Rodin's masterpiece The Kiss, the lovers also turn their heads to the right.
Prof Gunturkun stressed that he did not conduct his study because of an interest in kissing but "to understand how our brain asymmetries develop".
In this case, the right preference probably first develops in the womb.
Armed with this data, Prof Gunturkun is able to predict the kissing success rate during Valentine's day, assuming that the individual kissing "head motor bias" to the right is 2:1.
Of nine couples, four would both have the right bias, ensuring a successful kiss with no subsequent manoeuvring.
One couple would have a left bias, again ensuring good initial contact.
However, four couples would clash noses as they attempted a left/right kiss - it seems that almost half the population will get their Valentine's kiss off to an unpromising start.
This is one of many examples of a right preference: use of the right foot, eye and ear are also preferred with a ratio of about 2:1.
During the final weeks in the womb, babies develop a preference for turning their heads to the right.
His study shows that this taste for head turning lasts into adulthood, and, by setting up biases in movement and sensory perception, may influence other asymmetries in behaviour, as has already been seen in birds.
In birds, a preference for turning the head to the right before hatching induced motor, visual and mental imbalances said Prof Gunturkun.
He added: "If a similar effect occurs in humans and an initial asymmetry in the direction of head turning stimulates various functional left-right differences, then the head-turning bias of the newborn would have to overlap in time with the establishment of adult asymmetries."
Are you doing it right ?
and you too T-S for posting this!
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