Scientists Discover What Makes Screams So Scary

Screams triggered increased activity in the amygdala, the region of the brain that processes fear response.

According to recent research, the answer to the first question lies in the acoustic properties of the scream itself.

What was also “peculiar and cool” about their findings, the researchers said, is that alerting signals like auto alarms and house alarms activated the same auditory range as screams.

To better understand this sensation, Arnal started recording and analyzing screams he found on YouTube and in horror movies.

But it was not known what factors make screams sound so unpleasant. “Now, we think that’s because the brain is uniquely tuned to screams”.

“When you ask someone what a scream is, a person on the street will say they are loud or high-pitched”. Such high frequencies then trigger responses in the body, such as stimulation of areas in the brain that are mostly responsible for danger processing as well as how quickly can react to danger.

Since people around the world respond similarly to screams and alarm sounds, this suggests that the ability to detect them is hardwired in us and perhaps originated in our primate ancestors. But the rate was much higher with screams, between 30 and 150 hertz. This category of sounds may be describe as “rough” due to the wide hertz levels. Brain imaging data indicated that rougher human cries activate the brain’s fear circuitry.

“The same way a bad smell is added to natural gas to make it easily detectable; adding roughness to alarm sounds may improve and accelerate their processing”, Poeppel said. It’s sensational how growth made this possible and as reported by experts from University of Geneva, it must something that regarding the effect in our amygdala, the mental performance arrangement featuring a major part once we’re in peril conditions. She has contributed to Capital Wired many times for the past few years.As a writer, Mariel has a passion for technology and how it interacts with the medical industry.

“Screaming really works”, Poeppel said.

Screams have a unique quality, called roughness, which refers to how the sound changes in volume. Using functional magnetic resonance imagery, they monitored the study’s participants as they listened to these sounds.

The researchers plotted the sound waves in a manner that reflects the firing of auditory neurons, and they noticed that screams activate a range of acoustic information that scientists hadn’t considered to be important for communication.

“Many of the postdocs in my lab are in the middle of having kids and, of course, screams are very much on their mind”, Poeppel says.

They have a something called roughness.

“As a whole, our findings show that screams occupy a privileged acoustic niche that ensures their biological and ultimately social efficiency – we use them only when we need them”, says Poeppel.

Poeppel adds that his group would like to study not only other species, but other types of screams-such as screams of passion or rallying cries at sporting events-as well as the tell-tale screams of human infants to find out whether they have the same properties and activate the brain in the same way.