Image source, Getty Images. You might not have heard of "grima", but you have almost certainly felt it. It's a word to describe the feeling we get when we hear the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, or a knife scratching a plate. Now psychologists in Spain are suggesting it should be considered its own emotion.Mar 2, 2017
Oehler was one of the researchers who presented a paper on the subject at the recent Acoustical Society of America conference. He says the most obnoxious frequencies of the noise are amplified by the shape of the human ear canal — making people cringe when they hear it.Nov 9, 2011
Brain pickings The findings suggest that the fingernail-chalkboard sound triggers an uptick in communication between a region of the brain involved in hearing and another region of the brain involved in emotions.Dec 6, 2016
The feeling permeates your body, like when you hears nails on a chalkboard, and you just want to lash out at the person creating the sound. At the same time, the person creating the sound is completely oblivious to the sufferer's discomfort and baffled by their agitation which can lead to conflict between loved ones.Apr 14, 2017
But although grima is most often associated with sounds, some participants said grima was triggered by the feel of certain objects – as foam rubber does for Schweiger. Some were objects associated with loud noises, but others were objects that don't make noise, such as cork, velvet or sponges.Feb 28, 2017
Brain imaging shows that when we hear an unpleasant noise, the amygdala (active in processing emotions) adjusts the response of the auditory cortex (part of the brain that processes sound) which heightens activity and triggers a negative emotional reaction.Oct 11, 2012
The most dangerous frequency is at the median alpha-rhythm frequencies of the brain: 7 hz. This is also the resonant frequency of the body's organs.Dec 28, 2017
In a 2011 study, musicologists Michael Oehler and Christoph Reuter hypothesize that the unpleasantness of the sound is caused by acoustic resonance due to the shape of the human ear canal which amplifies certain frequencies, especially those in the range of 2000 to 4000 Hz (the median pitches mentioned above); at such ...
Sounds which are worse than nails on a chalkboard. Which sounds drive our ears absolutely bonkers? A British study rated the screechy scrape of a sharp knife along the surface of a ridged metal bottle as the most unpleasant sound.Oct 18, 2012
Misophonia is a condition where a strong arousal response is triggered when hearing specific human generated sounds, like chewing, and/or repetitive tapping noises, like pen clicking. It is diagnosed with clinical interviews and questionnaires since no psychoacoustic tools exist to assess its presence.May 26, 2021