Men Hear Women's Melodies

By David Epstein

Even if a wife's voice is not music to a man's ears, it may be melodic to his brain.

Psychiatrist Michael Hunter and fellow researchers at the University of Sheffield in England monitored the brain activity of 12 men as they listened to voice recordings and found they process male voices differently from those of females. Women's voices stimulate an area of the brain used for processing complex sounds, like music. Male voices activate the "mind's eye," a region of the brain used for conjuring imagery.

One reason, Hunter suggests, is that women generally have shorter vocal cords and a smaller larynx, giving them higher-pitched voices. Women's voices may also have more "natural melody," he adds. Qualities like pitch and volume vary more during speech. "There's more prosody in female speech."

Newspaper articles about Hunter's research said that men find the female voice more difficult to hear and understand. But Hunter thinks the opposite is true. Because the brain is apparently deciphering the modulation in women's voices, a female voice might be able to communicate more information per sentence than a male voice. "Most people at a railway station say female announcers are clearer," he says. "Maybe it's this added input."

Hunter speculated about why the male voice activates the brain's visual region: "Perhaps men listening to male voices try to picture what the speaker looks like." Hunter's findings might also explain why hallucinations usually involve male voices. "If the brain had to produce a voice from nothing, it might go for a more basic version—the male voice." The next step, he says, is to find out whether men's or women's voices are music to the female brain.

"Men Hear Women's Melodies." "Male and Female Voices Activate Distinct Regions in the Male Brain." Dilraj S. Sokhi et al. in NeuroImage, Vol. 27, No. 3, pages 572–578; September 2005. A press release about the study appears at www.sheffield.ac.uk/mediacentre/2005/422.html.

DISCOVER Vol. 26 No. 11 | November 2005 "R+D"

This is crazy.....

Target Corporation will continue to ban the Salvation Army from their 1,351 stores this Christmas season. The Army will not be allowed to place their red kettles in front of Target stores.

Despite increased need caused by the hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Target will continue their ban.

Many observers feel that the ban by Target is a result of pressure put on the company by homosexual groups. Homosexual activists have targeted the Salvation Army for years because of the Army’s refusal to recognize their lifestyle. Target is a supporter of various homosexual causes.

While Target contributes to homosexual groups, the company publicly states that they will not contribute to any religious groups. For Target, homosexual organizations are worthy of financial support, Christian and Jewish organizations are not.

Further showing their true colors, WTOP Radio Network in Washington, DC, reports that Target has begun stocking sex-toy-related products. "Formerly the domain of sex shops, such products have been brought out of the shadows by popular television shows like 'Sex and the City,'" WTOP reported.

Elexa by Trojan spokeswoman Cassandra Johnson says the products will be "discreetly packaged and sold in the feminine care aisle." Although not directly selling the "vibrator ring," Target is selling creams, gels, and stimulants associated with it. Click Here to see the product list website.

While Target continues to ban the Salvation Army, competitors such as Wal-Mart are increasing their donations to the Salvation Army. Wal-Mart and others continue to welcome the Army’s kettles.Please send an e-mail asking Target to end their ban of the Salvation Army and their offering of sex toy line of products.

In addition, you can e-mail Wal-Mart, thanking them for supporting the Salvation Army.


This letter will be sent to Target:

Dear Chairman,I am disappointed that your company continues to ban the Salvation Army from Target stores. I am also disappointed that Target has begun selling the 'Elexa by Trojan' line of sex products.Because of these actions, I will be making a conscious effort to not shop at Target, especially during this Christmas season.

This letter will be sent to Wal-Mart:

Dear Chairman,Thank you for continuing to allow the Salvation Army to place their kettles in front of your stores. And thank you for your additional contributions to help the victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.I will certainly keep your actions in mind when it comes time for me to go shopping.

To send these letters, go to the web-site (Here), then scroll down and enter your information at the bottom. Then click "Submit" and they will be sent.

One Face, One Neuron

When you spot a celebrity on a magazine cover, your brain recognizes the image in an instant--an effect that seems to occur because of a single neuron. A recent study indicates that our brains employ far fewer cells to interpret a given image than previously believed, and the findings could help neuroscientists determine how memories are formed and stored.

Exactly how the human brain works to record and remember an image is the subject of much debate and speculation. In previous decades, two extreme views have emerged. One says that millions of neurons work in concert, piecing together various bits of information into one coherent picture, whereas the other states that the brain contains a separate neuron to recognize each individual object and person. In the 1960s neurobiologist Jerome Lettvin named the latter idea the "grandmother cell" theory, meaning that the brain has a neuron devoted just for recognizing each family member. Lose that neuron, and you no longer recognize grandma.

Experts long ago dismissed this latter view as overly simplistic. But Rodrigo Quian Quiroga of the University of Leicester in England and his colleagues decided to investigate just how selective single neurons might be. The team looked at eight patients who each had 64 tiny electrodes implanted in their brains before epilepsy surgery (a procedure to pinpoint the source of their seizures). Many of the electrodes were placed in the hippocampus, an area critical for the storage of long-term memories.

While each participant was shown a large number of images of celebrities, animals, objects and landmark buildings, electrodes recorded the brain cells' firings. This screening stage determined which images elicited a strong response in at least one neuron. The team then tested the responses to three to eight variations of those images from the narrowed list.

In one patient, a single neuron responded to seven different photographs of actor Jennifer Aniston, while it practically ignored the 80 other images of animals, buildings, famous or nonfamous people that were also presented. "The first time we saw a neuron firing to seven different pictures of Jennifer Aniston--and nothing else--we literally jumped out of our chairs," Quian Quiroga recalls.

Similar results occurred in another patient with a neuron specific for actor Halle Berry; the neuron responded not only to photographs but also to a drawing and an image of her name. What is more, even when Berry was costumed as the masked Catwoman, if the patient knew it was Berry, the neuron still fired. "This neuron is responding to the abstract concept of Halle Berry rather than to any particular visual feature. It's like, 'I won't recall every detail of a conversation, but I'll remember what it was about.' This suggests we store memories as abstract concepts," Quian Quiroga adds. Besides celebrities, famous buildings, such as the Sydney Opera House and the Tower of Pisa, elicited single-neuron firing.

"Not many scientists would have predicted such explicit single-neuron signals associated with individual people," says Charles Connor, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University. "It should now be possible to look at precisely what information is represented by those cells--a clear starting point for studying how memories are encoded."

Although the "Jen" and "Halle" neurons behave much like a grandmother cell, the findings do not mean that a given brain cell will react to only one person or object, notes Christof Koch, one of the study's researchers at the California Institute of Technology. These cells probably respond to a wide range of items (some neurons responded to more than one person or object). "We are not saying that these are grand-mother cells, but for familiar things, like your family or celebrities, things you see frequently, the neurons are wired up and fire in a very specific way--much more so than previously thought," Koch explains.


~Read more at Scientific American (sciam)

Sorry

I'm having internet problems and keep losing my posts so for a while I will be posting good/funny links.

Todays link:
Toothpaste for dinner, This is a good site with lots of odd cartoons. From what I've seen none are dirty, but he has a lot, so be careful!