Men do have trouble hearing women, scientists find

[Andrew]

Sat Aug 6, 7:29 PM ET

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.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/britains...E0BHNlYwN0bWE-

[minn306]

This is interesting Andrew but please do not show this to my husband!! He will really use it against me when I ask him to do something!!

ha ha

[T-Bass]

Don't think it's true, which guy will give full focus to another guy but not a women? I don't know about the rest, but I'm sure I pay attention to women more than men. But when in relationships, Men don't listen on purpose, cause you hear the voice all the time.

I'm tired, didn't even read what I wrote,

Can I buy some sleep?

T-Bass

[Cactus]

Hmmm. I'd be curious to see this compared to how women process the voices of different genders. And I wonder if pre-pubescent voices are processed differently than post-pubescent voices?

[Squirrel]

Would that make musicians better listeners?

Makes sense from a "Watch out, there's a lion!" perspective when our good old ancestors with more primitive brains were out hunting and needed a means of communicating with each other. However, you'd think that modern men would have enough brain capacity to be able to handle more complex information aswell - so the excuse only applies to the mentally challenged