Aggression Faster Than The Speed Of Joy: Study Shows Our Brain Picks Up Negative Sounds Faster

In the journal Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, a study published shows that threatening sounds reach us faster than neutral or happy ones. Our brain uses its resources to locate the danger, thus ensuring we have our survival instinct working.

Even though sight and hearing both allow us to detect danger, sight cannot offer 360-degree coverage of the surrounding area. A researcher from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Nicolas Burra, says that is why we respond quickly to different voices around us.

The UNIGE researchers presented 22 short human voice sounds (600 milliseconds) that were either neutral or happy/angry to assess the brain's response to the auditory environment, reports The Tribune.

Thirty-five participants were given these sounds using two loudspeakers while an EEG (electroencephalogram) measured their brain’s electrical activity to the millisecond.

Leonardo Ceravolo, a researcher at UNIGE, said that people were made to listen to two sounds at once - either one neutral sound and one happy sound or one neutral or one angry one. When they felt anger or joy, they immediately had to press a button on the keyboard. The intensity of the brain activity and focus on a particular emotion before coming back to a primary state was then measured.

Using this data, they discovered a cerebral marker of auditory attention called N2ac. When the brain perceives a normal emotional target sound, N2ac activity is triggered for 200 milliseconds, but anger lasts longer.

After 400 milliseconds, another marker called LPCpc intervenes, and our attention disengages. Our brain analyses the anger sound longer because it can signal a potential threat.

Ceravalo thus says that this rapid detection of the source of the threat is essential for survival in a complex environment.