Posted on 08/07/2005 11:49:07 AM PDT by familyop
WHETHER it is to do the dishes, clean the car or vacuum the living room, men now have an answer to their wife's war cry that they never listen: it's not me, darling, it's my brain.
Scientists now have discovered that women's voices are more difficult for men to listen to, and process information from, than the voices of other men.
Researchers at the University of Sheffield tracked activity in the brains of 12 men while playing recordings of different voices. The results showed that there were startling differences in the way the brain responded to male and female sounds.
Men deciphered female voices using the auditory part of the brain that processes music. In comparison, the sound of male voices engaged a simpler mechanism at the back of the brain.
Dr Michael Hunter, who led the research, said yesterday: "The female voice is actually more complex than the male voice, due to differences in the size and shape of the vocal cords and larynx between men and women, and also due to women having greater natural 'melody' in their voices.
"This causes a more complex range of sound frequencies than in a male voice.
"When a man hears a female voice the auditory section of his brain is activated, which analyses the different sounds in order to 'read' the voice and determine the auditory face.
"When men hear a male voice the part of the brain that processes the information is colloquially known as the 'mind's eye'," he said.
"This is the part of the brain where people compare their experiences to themselves, so the man is comparing his own voice to the new voice to determine gender."
The findings, published in the journal NeuroImage, are not only of use to neglectful males in trouble with their partners, it may also help to explain why people suffering hallucinations usually hear male voices.
Different article, same topic:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1458648/posts#16
I heard a lady on the radio the other day who said that cursing, or swear words, originate in a different part of the brain from regular language. This has something to do with Tourette's syndrome, also with a phenomanom where brain injured people can curse and swear but not speak normally.
I thought it was quite strange. Damn strange, if you must know.
Yes. Studies on how our brains perceive and process information are interesting. I'm a little disappointed that the Sheffield researchers didn't hook women up, too. In the past (mid-'70s and before), it was common knowledge that both men and women more easily listened to men who did the news and emergency broadcasts.
Also, as a man gets older, the first sounds he has trouble hearing are the higher frequencies, like his wife's voice. Curse or blessing? You call it.
Now I know my husband has no excuse, he's a musician with perfect pitch.
Love the throwaway line at the end,
'The findings, published in the journal NeuroImage, are not only of use to neglectful males in trouble with their partners, it may also help to explain why people suffering hallucinations usually hear male voices.'
Just hmmmmmmmmm ...
Women usually don't have as much problem as men getting hooked up. :-)
"I'm a little disappointed that the Sheffield researchers didn't hook women up, too."
Me too. I have found in the world of business, to my utter frustration and disappointment, that men are just a lot more effective at getting a message, any message across. And heck, I even have a very deep voice and am often mistaken for a man on the phone, but it does no good. A real actual man can say THE EXACT SAME WORDS as I've said, and he will be listened to, while I have been ignored.
Tiresome.
A man with perfect pitch is not uncommon, which seems to contradict the study that men are incapable of musical processing when it comes to information exchange. Not every man is a musician, many are tone deaf, perhaps more of them than those with perfect pitch, so maybe male musicians are the exception to the rule to female and male brain processing, as nothing is black and white.
Interesting to note that men are more well known as being musicians throughout history than woman. Yet according to this study woman would make far better musicians.
Why not more females in music history? Perhaps they were never given the chance throughput history to demonstrate it professionally?
As a musician myself, with nearly perfect pitch, I don't seem to have the competitiveness that men have, which might also explain why woman are not as well known for their abilities to process information in the frequency domain. Having an ability and a compulsive drive wanting to prove it is entirely a different thing than music.
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