Why Do Screams Scare Us?

Why do screams scare us?

Human screams trigger a fear response to others, when we hear a shrill scream in a movie or if someone does so near us, is it the volume that scares us? or is it something else? Poeppel and a few of his colleagues used MRI to observe the brain’s reaction to screams and they had their patients tell them when they experienced a scream as being scary. The screams were “rough” meaning there was a quick change in volume, the intriguing thing was that the brain’s activity increased in the “emotional” center of our brain, not in the “acoustic” center. This evidence shows that a loud scream doesn’t just scare us by the sound, but it causes and emotional reaction of fear. Other sounds however did not activate the emotional center as much as the acoustic center. This proves that a human scream scares us on a more deep and emotional level.

This article intrigued me because when watching scary movies a man who pops up or a loud noise feels different than a human being screaming. When someone lets out a shrill scream it makes you uncomfortable and want to look away, screaming triggers a flight response. The area of human anatomy discussed in the article is that of the brain, and the activity of the brain. The subject of the article reveals another thing about our emotions and our social perceptions of sounds. The article taught me that most sounds are perceived and responded to by the acoustic terminal of our brain, it also taught me about the way fear is triggered in our brain, a jump scare isn’t fear, true fear is an emotional response.

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43556/title/Why-Screams-Scare-Us/