Why 'imaginary voices' are male

[emad]

By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education reporter



A university research team says it has discovered why most people "hearing voices" in hallucinations say they hear male voices.
Dr Michael Hunter's research at the University of Sheffield says that male voices are less complex to produce than female.

As such, when the brain spontaneously produces its own "voices", a male voice is more likely to have been generated.

Among both men and women, 71% of such "false" voices are male.

"Psychiatrists believe that these auditory hallucinations are caused when the brain spontaneously activates, creating a false perception of a voice," says Professor Hunter of the university's psychiatry department.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4675103.stm

[crispini]

1. Well, that makes a certain amount of sense.

Male voices typically have less inflection and an overall flatter base frequency.