Printed in full from http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/britainsciencehearing
LONDON (AFP) - Men who are accused of never listening by women now have
an excuse -- women's voices are more difficult for men to listen to than
other men's, a report said.
The Daily Mail, quoting findings published in the specialist magazine
NeuroImage, said researchers at Sheffield university in northern England
discovered startling differences in the way the brain responds to male
and female sounds.
Men deciphered female voices using the auditory part of the brain that
processes music, while male voices engaged a simpler mechanism, it said.
The Mail quoted researcher Michael Hunter as saying, "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."
The findings may help explain why people suffering hallucinations
usually hear male voices, the report added, as the brain may find it
much harder to conjure up a false female voice accurately than a false
male voice.
--
Gregory Gadow
techbear@serv.net
http://www.serv.net/~techbear
"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be
mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not
consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists
in professing to believe what one does not believe. It
is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may
so express it, that mental lying has produced in society.
When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the
chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional
belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared
himself for the commission of every other crime."
- Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason"
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