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Scream's roughness grants privileged access to the brain during sleep.
Guillaume Y T Legendre1, Maëva Moyne2,3,4, Judith Domínguez-Borràs4,5
1Department of Basic Neuroscience, University of Geneva, Rue Michel Servet 1, CH-1211, Geneva, Switzerland. guillaumeyt.legendre@gmail.com.
Scientific Reports
|May 14, 2025
Summary
Even quiet screams capture brain attention during sleep. Roughness in vocalizations signals danger, enhancing neural processing and ensuring adaptive responses during both wakefulness and sleep.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Sleep Science
- Auditory Perception
Background:
- Recognizing threats during sleep is vital for survival.
- Screams, with their characteristic roughness (30-150 Hz), are potent danger signals.
- The brain's processing of these rough sounds during sleep remains unexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if rough vocalizations, like screams, receive privileged neural processing during sleep.
- To determine if sound roughness enhances stimulus salience during both waking and sleeping states.
Main Methods:
- Human participants were exposed to low-intensity vocalizations (screams vs. neutral sounds) during wakefulness and sleep (NREM).
- Cortical responses were analyzed for theta phase-consistency and sleep spindle power.
Main Results:
- Screams elicited significantly higher theta phase-consistency compared to neutral sounds during both wakefulness and NREM sleep.
- Sleep spindle power was increased by screams, indicating heightened stimulus salience.
- Roughness in vocalizations enhanced exogenous processing in both states.
Conclusions:
- The roughness of vocalizations conveys stimulus relevance, even at low intensities.
- The brain maintains differential neural responses to salient stimuli during sleep.
- This preserved processing ensures adaptive reactions when external input is typically reduced.
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