The Screaming Brain
July 17, 2015
What qualities make screams so scary?
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Transcript
BOB HIRSHON (host):
A property called roughness gives human screams their fear-inducing quality. (Luc Amal)
The science of screams. I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.
What makes this scream lame:
[scream #1]
…and this one convincing?
[scream #2]
In the journal Current Biology, NYU neuroscientist David Poeppel and his colleagues report that while both are the same pitch and loudness, the blood-curdling scream has a quality called “roughness”.
DAVID POEPPEL (New York University):
One clear difference is you go “ahhh” or you go “aaahhhh.”
HIRSHON:
He says rough sounds like that consist of many spikes of sound per second and this quality activates the brain’s primitive fear center.
POEPPEL:
You can show that the more roughness a sound has, the scarier it’s rated.
HIRSHON:
The study looked at both adult vocalizations and artificial alarms. Next up for the team, perhaps the most ear-splitting, nerve-jangling sound of them all:
[baby scream]
The cry of the baby. I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.
