What does screaming have that makes it a terrible sound for us humans? A new research from New York University that was published in the journal Current Biology has an explanation on why human screams are so awful. They find that among the sounds humans make, screaming have a unique sonic property that activates not only the parts of the brain involved in auditory processing, but also the brain's fear circuitry, according to Huffington Post.

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Researchers said on Thursday that they explored how the brain handles a scream. According to them, the loud, high-pitched sound targets a deep brain structure called the amygdala that plays a major role in danger processing and fear learning, as per Reuters.

A neuroscientist of University of Geneva in Switzerland, Luc Arnal, who is also  the study lead author, said, "We show that screams and artificial alarm signals use a specific frequency range that is not used in speech and non-alarm signals."

Arnal added, "Sounds contain these frequencies stimulate deep brain areas involved in danger processing and accelerate reactions to danger."

The researchers noted that while most people say screams are more terrible than other sounds, they're generally not to be able to identify why they feel such strong aversion. They would actually say that it's because of the loud or high-pitched sound, but these qualities are not what makes a scream distinct from other sounds, Huffington Post reports.

According to Philly.com, Arnal and his team studied an audio makeup of screams and alarm sounds, such as car horns and buzzer. They also recorded screams from volunteer screamers in their lab. And some of the researchers also downloaded different kinds of sound clips from the Internet.

After experimenting the varieties of sounds, they discovered that screams and alarm sounds share an audio trait known as "roughness." Arnal said, that this refers to how fast a sound changes in loudness. While the normal speech patterns only have slow differences in loudness compared to screams that modulates very fast, he added that the phenomenon is similar to the rapid flashes of a stroke light.

In order to understand how the brain processes these kind of sounds, the researchers monitored brain activity using a neuroimaging method called functional magnetic resonance while the subjects are listening to screams.

According to Reuters, the researchers found out that while the subjects are listening to screams, it increases the activation of the fear response In the amygdala, which is an almond-shaped structure situated deep inside the brain's medial temporal lobe.

Arnal said that what made him interested in screams is when his friend told him that the sound of his newborn baby scream was literally hijacking his friend's brain, thus, he wondered what makes screams so efficient as an alarm signal.

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