Josh Clark

And that the higher on the roughness scale, if you can call it that, that the screams or alarms were, the greater the amygdala activity.

And then the greater the amygdala activity that was shown in the scans, the higher those sounds had been rated for scariness by the volunteers previously.

And when they wrapped it up and put all this together, they were like, I forgot what we were studying in the first place.

Yes, and they think it's because the amygdala is tuned to that 30 to 150 hertz roughness band.

So the amygdala has its own route for getting you aroused, and not necessarily in the best way, when you hear a scream.

And it's also listening out to a specific band of modulation to that scream's existence.

So clearly, thanks to our NYU researchers back in 2015, screams are a really important and kind of overlooked part of human speech, right?

Yeah, for sure.

And they think also, Chuck, that not only have we evolved to develop this alarm system, which clearly is what it is, because not only are you saying help, you're also, depending on how nice or altruistic the people listening are, you're also saying, look out, there's danger.

And they may run away if they flee, or they might run to you to help you if they're ready to fight.

Mm-hmm.

But they also have shown that screams have evolved in other ways, too.

Like we don't scream just out of an alarm system anymore.

There's actually at least six other screams that they discovered that correlate or correspond to six other separate emotions.

There's a Europe song called Scream of Anger.

Really?

And Europe, of course, is known for a different song.

Okay.

Scream of Anger is even better.

It's like actual metal tinge.