Recent research demonstrated that human non-alarm scream calls are processed by the brain more efficiently than alarm scream calls.

We respond to positive screams much faster and with higher sensitivity

We all know that shouting can save lives. Mammalian species use scream-like calls to show the presence of predators and other threats. Humans do the same — we yell to signal danger or communicate aggression. But yelling can also relate to expressing such strong positive emotions as joy or excitement.

Past studies have mostly analysed alarming fear screams. For the first time, researchers focused on studying non-alarming screams and found that these types of calls are perceived and processed by the brain more efficiently than their alarming counterparts.

A team at the University of Zurich Department of Psychology led by Sascha Frühholz studied the nature of the full spectrum of human scream calls. As a result, the six emotionally distinct types of scream calls were revealed — shouts indicating sadness, fear, pain, anger, pleasure, and joy scream

“We were surprised by the fact that listeners responded more quickly and accurately, and with a higher neural sensitivity, to non-alarming and positive scream calls than to alarming screams,” Frühholz pointed out.

But yelling can also relate to expressing such strong positive emotions as joy or excitement.

Possibly, only humans scream to signal positive emotions

As the participants of the study listened to the sounds, their brain activity underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to check how they perceived, processed, recognized and categorized the human screams of various emotional nature. The research team investigated that the frontal, auditory and limbic brain regions showed much more activity and neural connectivity when hearing positive screams than when processing alarm scream calls.

Human and primate cognitive systems were previously thought to be specially tailored for recognizing threat and danger signals in the form of screams. However, the researchers discovered that human scream calls  might have become more diversified over the course of  human evolution. This might have been caused by communicative demands produced by human’s increasingly complex social environments.

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