Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on June 29, 2007
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2007 2(4):334-337; doi:10.1093/scan/nsm028
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The voices of seduction: cross-gender effects in processing of erotic prosody
1Department of General Psychiatry and 2Section Experimental MR of the CNS, Department of Neuroradiology, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
Gender specific differences in cognitive functions have been widely discussed. Considering social cognition such as emotion perception conveyed by non-verbal cues, generally a female advantage is assumed. In the present study, however, we revealed a cross-gender interaction with increasing responses to the voice of opposite sex in male and female subjects. This effect was confined to erotic tone of speech in behavioural data and haemodynamic responses within voice sensitive brain areas (right middle superior temporal gyrus). The observed response pattern, thus, indicates a particular sensitivity to emotional voices that have a high behavioural relevance for the listener.
Keywords: emotion; erotic; fMRI; prosody; sex; voice
Correspondence should be addressed to Dirk Wildgruber, Department of General Psychiatry, University of Tuebingen, Osianderstrasse 24, 72076 Tuebingen, Germany. E-mail: dirk.wildgruber{at}med.uni-tuebingen.de
Received March 29, 2007. Accepted May 25, 2007.