Neural responses to male and female voices: An event-related potential study on listener and speaker differences

This study investigated sex-based differences in the temporal dynamics of brain responses to male and female voices using electroencephalography (EEG). We examined whether the sex of the speaker and listener influenced the early and late event-related potential (ERP) components. The participants (14 females and 15 males) listened to voice stimuli and identified the speaker's sex. The results showed a trend toward lower recognition accuracy for female voices. EEG revealed distinct differences in responses; both male and female participants exhibited stronger positivity for female voices, whereas late-stage components showed pronounced responses to female voices in male participants. These findings suggest that voice-based sex identification relies on both basic acoustic feature processing and advanced cognitive stages with sex-specific dynamics in brain responses. This study provides insight into the neural mechanisms of voice perception and highlights the influence of the interaction between voice gender and listener's sex, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of social communication.