From: Scientific American
Why Screams Are So Upsetting
Scientific American:
If there is one sound that bettered our ancestors’ chances of survival, it might be the scream. When a baby needs food, it hollers; if a ravenous lion prowls a little too close, a blood-curdling shriek alerts the tribe. Yet from an acoustic standpoint, screams—and how our brain processes the sound—have been largely overlooked by researchers, until now. A study published in July in Current Biology found that screams are sonically unique in a way that perfectly captures our attention.
By analyzing screams culled from YouTube videos, films and volunteer shriekers, researchers led by neuroscientist David Poeppel, who runs a language-processing laboratory at New York University, found that screams occupy a dedicated position on the auditory spectrum.
Read the whole story: Scientific American
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