JT
Joined: Jan 04, 2003
Posts: 3772
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JT
This Just in......
Men hear women's musical voices, just not lyrics
"You don't listen."
Chances are you hear that phrase on a regular basis if a)you're a man, and b) you spend a significant amount of time around a woman. Men seem to miss important facts and sometimes entire conversations directed at them by the fairer sex all the time. (amen)
Many women seem inclined to chalk up this lack of attention to laziness, selfishness, and a willful refusal to listen. Many simply call it "being a man."
Men actively work to bridge this gap by looking for excuses. Now science has provided a significant boost to the art of excuse-making by examining how the brain processes speech recognition. Solid evidence shows the female voice (like everything else about women) is complicated for men to decipher.
Researchers at the University of Sheffield in England studied the brains of a dozen men as they listened to taped voice recordings and found a startling difference in the way the male brain processed male and female voices.
Male voices were processed at the back of the brain in an area sometimes called the "mind's eye," where we compare experiences to ourselves. That means that the recognition process for the male voice is pretty straightforward.
When the test subjects listened to female voices, those sounds were processed by the auditory section of the brain, which deciphers more complex sounds such as music. Researchers concluded that the male brain has to work a lot harder to make out what a woman is saying than when the conversation is with another man.
Furthermore, differences in a woman's throat and vocal chords mean her voice produces a more complex range of sounds. I think the comparison between women's voices and music is appropriate. Most men enjoy how a woman's voice sounds but often don't hear what she says. (amen)
We hear them 'singing," but we don't always remember or pay much attention to the "lyrics."
By Bill Ferguson, a columnist for the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph.
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