Mental Health

World's Most Unpleasant Sounds Stimulate Negative Emotions; Science Explains Why

By S.C. Stringfellow | Update Date: Oct 12, 2012 03:52 PM EDT

You ever wonder why exactly the sound of nails on a chalk board makes you cringe? Or why watching someone fold a piece a paper using their nails makes you grind your teeth and the hair on the back of your arms stand upright?

 A study published in the Journal of Neuroscience explains that heightened sensitivity and response between our emotional and auditory factions in the brain are to blame. 

A report from Newcastle University explains that the interaction between the region of the brain that processes sound, the auditory cortex, activates the amygdala which processes  negative emotions when we hear unpleasant sounds. 

"It appears there is something very primitive kicking in," says Dr Sukhbinder Kumar, author of the paper. "It's a possible distress signal from the amygdala to the auditory cortex." 

Thirteen volunteers responded to a range of sounds that was than measured by an MRI machine, and rated them as pleasant or unpleasant with varying numeric degrees of (un)pleasantness include. The top 10 most unpleasant noises rated by volunteers are listed as follows:

  1. Knife on a bottle
  2. Fork on a glass
  3. Chalk on a blackboard
  4. Ruler on a bottle
  5. Nails on a blackboard
  6. Female scream
  7. Angle-grinder
  8. Brakes on a cycle squealing
  9. Baby crying
  10. Electric drill

The least unpleasant sounds were:

  • Applause
  • Baby laughing
  • Thunder
  • Water flowing
  • What could you add to either list that researchers did not consider?

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