What does it mean? preferences for men’s physical and intellectual abilities are more pronounced the text: A lot of recent research has moved beyond PMS to try to understand women’s cycles, and some of it, controversially, focuses on women’s sexual behavior around the time of ovulation. One new study, published April 22 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, even proposes that the menstrual cycle may play a role in humans’ musical abilities. It sounds bizarre, but the idea is that women’s preferences for men’s physical and intellectual abilities are more pronounced during the fertile part of the cycle. So a preference for more sophisticated musicianship during the fertile time of month, around ovulation, might have given men with more musical talent an advantage in mating. Over time the species would have become more musical, so the thinking goes.