Josh Clark

This is a really robust study.

So they analyzed recorded sounds and they found that screams were all in roughness and the only other sounds that were in there were alarms, right?

Then they got a bunch of volunteers, almost guaranteed NYU undergrads looking for extra credit.

And they said, we want you to make a bunch of sounds.

We want you to scream.

We want you to speak normally.

We want you to scream, speak normally.

and make a bunch of meaningless vocalizations, like yips, yammers, yelps, that whole thing, right?

Sure.

And then they analyzed those just like they analyzed the recorded sounds, and they found that all of the scream sounds were in the roughness domain, and all of the non-scream sounds, including yips and yammersers, were not in the roughness domain whatsoever.

So they're really zeroing in, and yet there's more to this study.

This is how robust it was.

Right.

So they're really drilling down here.

It keeps going, everybody.

They actually took volunteers, probably the same ones who rated the scariness of the sounds,

And they scanned them while they were listening to scary sounds.

And not just screams, but also artificial alarms, too, and probably some of the nonsense sounds and musical sounds.

And as they were listening, the screams and the alarms were the only ones that caused spikes in the amygdala.

Remember, the amygdala is where that set-aside pathway for screams is.