A bottle being scraped with a knife, from Fritish on Flickr
Heightened activity between the emotional and auditory parts of the brain explains why the sound of chalk on a blackboard, or a knife on a bottle, is so unpleasant. In a study published today in the Journal of Neuroscience UCL and Newcastle University scientists reveal the interaction between the region of the brain that processes sound, the auditory cortex, and the amygdala, which is active in the processing of negative emotions when we hear unpleasant sounds. Brain imaging has shown that when we hear an unpleasant noise the amygdala modulates the response of the auditory cortex heightening activity and provoking our negative reaction. "It appears there is something very primitive kicking in," says author Sukhbinder Kumar, who has a joint appointment at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL and Newcastle University. "It's a possible distress signal from the amygdala to the auditory cortex." The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how the brains of 13 volunteers responded to a range of sounds. Listening to the noises inside the scanner they rated them from the most unpleasant - the sound of knife on a bottle - to pleasing - babbling water. Researchers were then able to study the brain response to each type of sound.
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