20160121 - talking

'It's not what you say, 

it's the way that you say it'

A laugh or a growl says more to a human than a joke or an angry word, and we pay more attention when we hear an emotional sound than we do if someone puts the feeling into words. We also interpret emotions much faster than words, within a tenth of a second. These are the findings of research published in Biological Psychology.

Previous studies carried out at Cornell University have suggested that while human feelings themselves are individual and subjective, shared patterns of activity in the brain enables them to be converted into a standard code.
Researchers from McGill University in Canada wanted to know whether the brain would register a different reaction in response to sounds, as opposed to words. Sounds that convey emotions include laughing, growling or crying.
The team selected three basic emotions: anger, sadness and happiness. They played a combination of sounds reflecting those emotions to 24 participants, while simultaneously playing nonsense phrases.
Sentences, such as, "The dirms are in the cindabal," were chosen so as not to give any linguistic hint as to which feelings were being expressed. At the same time, an electroencephalogram (EEG) was used to record how quickly the participants' brains responded to the cues.
As the participants listened to the phrases, spoken with different emotions, they tried to identify which emotions were being expressed.

Sounds of emotion more readily understood

The EEG was able to measure to a millisecond the brain's response to emotions, as compared with words. The researchers could also observe which emotions, if any, were most quickly recognized through sounds, the extent of the brain's response and whether emotional sounds have a stronger effect on individuals who are anxious.............................


 http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/305452.php