Gender disparity in subcortical encoding of binaurally presented speech stimuli: An auditory evoked potentials study

Anatomical, biological and biochemical distinctions between females and males could alter the neural encoding of the acoustic cues of speech stimuli at subcortical level. Females have an advantage in binaural processing of the slow and fast elements of speech. This could be a physiological evidence for better identification of speaker and emotional tone of voice, as well as better perceiving the phonetic information of speech in women.