Here’s Why Screams Raise Your Mental Alarm
"The Scream" by Edvard Munch, 1892WebMuseum via Wikimedia CommonsScreams can jar you from a deep sleep, instantly making you feel panicked even if you were in the deepest state of relaxation. Now researchers from New York University understand why screams affect us the way they do: the frequency of the sound changes very quickly, which awakens parts of the brain associated with fear and panic.When you imagine a scream, you probably assume that it is high-pitched (high-frequency sound) and loud. But that’s not the whole story, the researchers say—screams have a certain quality that makes them distinct from other kinds of loud, high-pitched sounds. The study was published today in Current Biology.That quality is called roughness, which humans perceive when a sound's amplitude changes at a particular rate -- between 30 and 150 times per second. The researchers came to these conclusions through a series of...