Unpleasant Sounds Research Articles

Changes of EEG power spectrum in response to the emotional auditory stimuli in patients in acute and recovery stages of TBI (traumatic brain injury)

We investigated variability of responses to emotionally important auditory stimulation in different groups of TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) in acute state or recovery. The patients sampling consisted of three different groups: patients in coma or vegetative state, patients with Severe and Moderate TBI in recovery period. Subjects were stimulated with auditory stimuli containing important physiological sounds (coughing, vomiting), emotional sounds (laughing, crying), nature sounds (bird song, barking), unpleasant household sounds (nails scratching the glass), natural sounds (sea, rain, fire) and neutral sounds (white noise). The background encephalographic activity was registered during at least 7 minutes. EEG was recorded while using portable device "Entsefalan". Significant differences of power of the rhythmic activity registered during the presentation of different types of stimuli were analyzed using Mathlab and Statistica 6.0. Results showed that EEG-response to the emotional stimuli differed depending on consciousness level, stimuli type, severity of TBI. Most valuable changes in EEG spectrum power for a patient with TBI were found for unpleasant auditory stimulation. Responsiveness to the pleasant stimulation could be registered in later stages of coming out of coma than to unpleasant stimulation. Alpha-activity is reducing in patients with TBI: the alpha rhythm depression is most evident in the control group, less in group after moderate TBI, and even less in group after severe TBI. Patients in coma or vegetative state didn't show any response in rhythmic power in the frequency of alpha rhythm.

Noise and its impact on our world

Noise invades all aspects of our lives. The word noise is actually derived from the Latin word “nausea”, with one possible connection being that unpleasant sounds were made by seasick passengers or sailors in ancient times. In modern times, the demand for noise research and consulting has intensified in concert with rising population densities, growing industrialized societies, escalating demands from consumers, and increasingly common standards and legislation related to noise. The Acoustical Society of America Technical Committee on Noise (TC Noise) is concerned with all aspects of noise, ranging from noise generation and propagation, to active and passive methods of controlling noise, to the effects of noise on humans and animals. This talk will explore the broad topic of noise and its impact on our world.

Soundwalking을 통한 제주도 올레길의 소리풍경 조사

본 논문은 최근 제주도의 관광상품으로 각광받고 있는 올레길의 소리풍경을 soundwalking을 이용해 조사하였다. 이를 위해 올레길의 전체 16개 코스 중 3개 코스의 10개 지점에서 발생되는 소리의 특징을 문장으로 기술하고 소리의 크기를 측정하는 한편 녹음하였다. 또한 관광객 32명 및 음향전문가 5인을 대상으로 설문을 수행하여 해당지점의 배경 소리의 크기와 불쾌감에 대해 조사하였으며, 설문조사를 통해 인공음 및 자연음 17개를 제시한 뒤 그 중 가장 크게 들리는 소리 및 불쾌하게 들리는 소리, 듣기 좋은 소리와 인상적인 소리를 응답하도록 하였다. 또한 현장에서 녹음해온 소리를 실험실에서 청감실험을 통해 평가하여 현장 실험결과와 비교하였다. 실험 결과 제주도 올레길에서 가장 많이 발생하는 소리는 파도 및 바람소리, 자동차 소음과 사람의 말소리였으며, 그 중에서 듣기 좋은 소리는 자연음으로 이루어져있고 불쾌한 소리는 인공음인 것으로 나타났다. 현장에서 녹음해온 음원 및 영상을 통해 실험실에서 주관적 평가를 수행한 결과 소리의 불쾌감에 영향을 미치는 것은 인공음과 자연음의 비중이며 이는 곧 소리의 크기에 대한 평가에도 영향을 미친다는 것을 알 수 있었다. 그리고 현장평가와 실험실 평가 모두 소리의 크기와 불쾌감에 매우 큰 상관관계가 있음을 알 수 있었다. The present study aims to investigate the soundscapes of Jeju olle route through the soundwalking. In order to do this, sound measurements and sound recording were undertaken at 10 points along Jeju olle route. Also, loudness of background sound and figure sound were examined. Subjective surveys were carried out using questionnaire and interviews with 32 tourists and 5 acoustical specialists in order to investigate the loudest sound, most pleasant and unpleasant sound, and impressive sound among 17 natural and artificial sounds. Additionally, laboratory experiments were achieved to evaluates sound that have been recorded at the field using same questionnaire and the results were compared with those of field experiments. As a result, the sound heard most in Jeju olle route is the sea wave sound, wind sound, automobile noise, and human voice. It was revealed that the most pleasant sound consisted of nature sound among them, and that unpleasant sounds are artificial sounds. The results of subjective test denote that unpleasant sound is affected by ratio of artificial sound and nature sound. And this also affects the assessment about the loudness of the sound. Also, it was found that the results of both field test and laboratory test are closely correlated in the evaluation of loudness of sound and unpleasant feeling.

Psychoacoustics of chalkboard squeaking

At least since 1975 the “pleasantness” of a sound is discussed from many different angles (Ely 1975; Aures 1984; Halpern etal. 1986; Vaschillo 2003; Neumann & Waters 2006; Cox 2008), but often chalkboard squeaking or scratching a chalkboard with finger nails tops the list of unpleasant sounds. The aim of the presented study is to detect specific parts of the sounds that make chalkboard squeaking particularly unpleasant. With a combination of perception experiments and electro-physiological measurements, it was analyzed to what extent the knowledge about the sounds influenced the subjects' judgments and/or the physiological reactions. Basically the study is a replication of Halpern etal. (1986), whose methods were extended by several sophisticated sound analysis and re-synthesis techniques and the measurement of some electro-physiological parameters (heart rate and skin resistance) during listening. First results show that especially the modification of the tonal parts as well as applying a filter between 2000 and 4000 Hz led to a more pleasant sound perception. Almost all stimuli were rated more unpleasant if the subjects knew about the nature of the sounds.

Sound and Emotion in Milton's Paradise Lost

This research was designed to test the hypothesis that Milton's poem Paradise Lost is meaningfully patterned with respect to sound. Thirty-six segments from 12 Books of Paradise Lost were scored (Whissell, 2000) in terms of their proportional use of Pleasant, Cheerful, Active, Nasty, Unpleasant, Sad, Passive, and Soft sounds. Paradise Lost includes more Active, Nasty, and Unpleasant sounds and fewer Pleasant, Passive, Soft, and Sad sounds than a representative sample of anthologized poetry. The way in which emotional sounds are patterned (e.g., the rise and fall in the proportion of Pleasant sounds across Books) suggests the presence of three narratives within the work: Sin and Salvation-Foreseen in Heaven (Books I-II), The Fall of Man (Books IV-IX), and Sin and Salvation-Foretold on Earth (Books X-XI). The poem analyzed had updated spelling, and the author's exact intentions when creating it are not accessible to direct investigation, for this among other reasons.

Auditory cortex activation is modulated by emotion: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) study

Visual emotional stimuli evoke enhanced activation in early visual cortex areas which may help organisms to quickly detect biologically salient cues and initiate appropriate approach or avoidance behavior. Functional neuroimaging evidence for the modulation of other sensory modalities by emotion is scarce. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to test whether sensory facilitation by emotional cues can also be found in the auditory domain. We recorded auditory brain activation with functional near-infrared-spectroscopy (fNIRS), a non-invasive and silent neuroimaging technique, while participants were listening to standardized pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral sounds selected from the International Affective Digitized Sound System (IADS). Pleasant and unpleasant sounds led to increased auditory cortex activation as compared to neutral sounds. This is the first study to suggest that the enhanced activation of sensory areas in response to complex emotional stimuli is apparently not restricted to the visual domain but is also evident in the auditory domain.

Evolving the Ideal Visual-to-Auditory Sensory Substitution Device Using Interactive Genetic Algorithms

Visual-to-auditory sensory substitution devices have various benefits over tactile counterparts (eg, less hardware limitations), but they also suffer from several drawbacks (eg, learning time, potentially unpleasant sounds). An ‘ideal’ device would be intuitive to learn, pleasant to listen to, and capture relevant visual information in sufficient detail. In this presentation, we outline the general problem of how to convert an image into sound, and we give an overview of some possible approaches to the problem. We then go on to describe our own recent explorations using Interactive Genetic Algorithms (IGAs). IGAs enable a highly dimensional problem space to be explored rapidly. Initially, a set of orthogonally varying settings need to be identified (eg, different levels of maximum and minimum pitch, different ways of mapping lightness-loudness, musical vs non-musical intervals), and a set of random permutations of these settings are chosen. Participants then evaluate the ‘fitness’ of these different algorithms (eg, by selecting what the correct image is for a given sound). The fittest algorithms are then ‘bred’ together over successive generations. Using this approach, we compare the performance of evolved devices against one of the main existing devices (the vOICe) in three tasks: audio-visual matching, aesthetic preference, and auditory discrimination.

Auditory–Olfactory Integration: Congruent or Pleasant Sounds Amplify Odor Pleasantness

Even though we often perceive odors while hearing auditory stimuli, surprisingly little is known about auditory-olfactory integration. This study aimed to investigate the influence of auditory cues on ratings of odor intensity and/or pleasantness, with a focus on 2 factors: "congruency" (Experiment 1) and the "halo/horns effect" of auditory pleasantness (Experiment 2). First, in Experiment 1, participants were presented with congruent, incongruent, or neutral sounds before and during the presentation of odor. Participants rated the odors as being more pleasant while listening to a congruent sound than while listening to an incongruent sound. In Experiment 2, participants received pleasant or unpleasant sounds before and during the presentation of either a pleasant or unpleasant odor. The hedonic valence of the sounds transferred to the odors, irrespective of the hedonic tone of the odor itself. The more the participants liked the preceding sound, the more pleasant the subsequent odor became. In contrast, the ratings of odor intensity appeared to be little or not at all influenced by the congruency or hedonic valence of the auditory cue. In conclusion, the present study for the first time provides an empirical demonstration that auditory cues can modulate odor pleasantness.

A method for continuously assessing the autonomic response to music-induced emotions through HRV analysis

Interest in therapeutic applications of music has recently increased, as well as the effort to understand the relationship between music features and physiological patterns. In this study, we present a methodology for characterizing music-induced effects on the dynamics of the heart rate modulation. It consists of three steps: (i) the smoothed pseudo Wigner-Ville distribution is performed to obtain a time-frequency representation of HRV; (ii) a parametric decomposition is used to robustly estimate the time-course of spectral parameters; and (iii) statistical population analysis is used to continuously assess whether different acoustic stimuli provoke different dynamic responses. Seventy-five healthy subjects were repetitively exposed to pleasant music, sequences of Shepard tones with the same tempo as the pleasant music and unpleasant sounds overlaid with the same sequences of Shepard tones. Results show that the modification of HRV parameters are characterized by an early fast transient phase (15-20 s), followed by an almost stationary period. All kinds of stimuli provoked significant changes compared to the resting condition, while during listening to pleasant music the heart and respiratory rates were higher (for more than 80% of the duration of the stimuli, p < 10(-5)) and the power of the HF modulation was lower (for more than 70% of the duration of the stimuli, p < 0.05) than during listening to unpleasant stimuli.

Factors of Unpleasantness in Stick-Slip Sounds -Peak Frequency and Envelope-

We aim to discover the factors of an unpleasant sound by processing the sound in the frequency domain. The processed sounds have the same amplitude envelope as an unpleasant sound, and consist of only one or two peak frequencies of the original unpleasant sound. Using these sounds, we attempt to specify a frequency band relating to unpleasantness. As a result, the sound with two pair of peak frequencies tends to make subjects feel unpleasant compared with one peak, and subjects feel unpleasant by the sounds having peaks in 2kHz and 9kHz around. Next, we investigate whether the sound becomes unpleasant by adding the amplitude envelope of unpleasant sounds. The result shows that addition of the envelope makes subjects feel unpleasant compared with the carrier alone.

P03-140 Analysis of sound's emotional perception (pleasantness/unpleasantness) in schizophrenic patients in early stages of the disease

Introduction:Many studies have shown that schizophrenic patients are noted to have deficits in the recognition and discrimination of facial emotions. in contrast, studies examining emotional sound perception are scarce.Objective:Evaluate emotional sound perception (pleasantness/unpleasantness) in schizophrenic patients in early stages of the disease.Methods:This study was performed on schizophrenic outpatients from the Psychiatry Departments of Hospital Santa Maria and Hospital Júlio de Matos, Lisbon. Sample group comprised 29 schizophrenic patients and 29 matched healthy controls, equal in sex and age. Evaluations included the Mini Mental State Examination; the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS); the Newcastle Battery of Pleasant and Unpleasant Sounds (NBPUS), which we developed to study this issue, and a visual scale of self-assessment of the emotional experience.Results and discussion:There was no statistical difference between groups. Results suggest that schizophrenic patients in early stages of the disease have a preserved emotional perception of sounds. No correlation was found between clinical severity measures (disease duration, PANSS total and sub scores) and mean unpleasantness/pleasantness rating, which may suggest that the emotional perception of sounds is rather stable during the first five years of illness.Conclusion:These results need further investigation on bigger samples studies. Future research in this area is important for the larger study of emotion and cognition.

Mapping unpleasantness of sounds to their auditory representation

Certain sounds, for example, the squeal of chalk on a blackboard, are typically perceived as highly unpleasant. This study addressed the question of what aspects of the auditory representation of such sounds are associated with judgments of unpleasantness. Participants rated the perceived unpleasantness of a large number of sounds that included "griding" and other unpleasant sounds. A multivariate partial least-squares (PLS) model was then built to relate the ratings of unpleasantness with an auditory representation derived from a model of processing in the auditory pathway. The "existence region" of unpleasantness in the auditory space of frequency-temporal modulation was determined after the PLS model had been validated by predicting the unpleasantness of novel sounds from the auditory representation. It was observed that the existence region corresponded to spectral frequencies between 2500 and 5500 Hz, and temporal modulations in the range 1-16 Hz.

不快音および快音に対するα波の振幅・位相応答

不快音および快音に対するα波の振幅・位相応答

Event-related potential study of attention capture by affective sounds

Affective pictures trigger attentional responses in humans but very little is known about the processing of affective environmental sounds. Here, we used an oddball event-related potential paradigm to determine the saliency of unpleasant sounds presented among affectively neutral sounds. Participants performed a one-back task while listening to pseudo-randomized sound sequences comprising 70% neutral sounds, 15% unpleasant sounds of matched peak intensity, and 15% louder neutral sounds. Louder neutral sounds elicited a larger N1 component and a significant P3a variation with a central distribution. Unpleasant sounds did not affect early components but elicited a significant frontocentral P3a modulation. We conclude that affective environmental sounds spontaneously capture human attention but fail to modulate early perceptual processing when sound peak intensity is controlled.

Aggression inhibition in high- and low-risk subjects for child physical abuse: effects of a child's hostile intent and the presence of mitigating information

Exposure of an aggressor to the suffering of his/her victim generally inhibits subsequent attacks [e.g. Baron, 1971a] presumably because of an empathic process. Physically abusive parents and individuals at high risk for child physical abuse are thought to present a deficit in empathy [e.g. Milner, Halsey and Fultz, 1995]. The present research was designed to investigate whether highrisk, compared to low-risk, subjects for child physical abuse select more aggressive responses and aggress with more intensity toward a supposed child whose behavior is adequate, inadequate or ambiguous in the presence of the child's pain cues. A second objective was to explore whether high-risk, compared to low-risk, subjects for child physical abuse fail to adequately integrate mitigating information and, therefore, do not inhibit their aggressive behavior following the receipt of mitigating information before or during an inadequate child behavior. Participants were engaged in an experimental task that involved attempting to teach a child how to proceed accurately through a computer-displayed maze and were given the opportunity to send positive (pleasant sounds and happy faces) and negative feedback (mad faces and unpleasant sounds) to the child. Two hundred and fifty undergraduate students participated in the experiment. A 2 x 5 factorial design based on two levels of the participant's risk status (high, low) and five conditions based on the child's behavior and the introduction of mitigating information was employed. As expected, low-risk, compared to high-risk, subjects showed less aggression when mitigating information was provided. Language: en

Affective Speech Elicited With a Computer Game.

To determine the degree to which emotional changes in speech reflect factors other than arousal, such as valence, the authors used a computer game to induce natural emotional speech. Voice samples were elicited following game events that were either conducive or obstructive to the goal of winning and were accompanied by either pleasant or unpleasant sounds. Acoustic analysis of the speech recordings of 30 adolescents revealed that mean energy, fundamental-frequency level, utterance duration, and the proportion of an utterance that was voiced varied with goal conduciveness; spectral energy distribution depended on manipulations of pleasantness; and pitch dynamics depended on the interaction of pleasantness and goal conduciveness. The results suggest that a single arousal dimension does not adequately characterize a number of emotion-related vocal changes, lending weight to multidimensional theories of emotional response patterning.

Big Noise in Baghdad

Is it a loud hailer… or is it a non-lethal weapon? Only experience will give the answer, but American forces in Iraq are to be equipped with a noisy piece of equipment known as a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD). One use is to give instructions from a safe distance to crowds, vehicles, shipping or anything else which may be a potential danger. However, the LRAD also packs a punch as a generator of loud and unpleasant sounds. Flick a switch and change from voice messages to a built in generator, giving an ear-splitting and piercingly unpleasant output, designed to make you wish you were well out of its beam. The LRAD is a development from a new form of highly directional loudspeaker, HSS (HyperSonic Sound), from the American Technology Corporation ( www.atcsd.com )

Psychopathy and Physiological Response to Emotionally Evocative Sounds.

Despite considerable evidence that psychopathic criminals are deviant in their emotional reactions, few studies have examined responses to both pleasurable and aversive stimuli or assessed the role of different facets of psychopathy in affective deviations. This study investigated physiological reactions to emotional sounds in prisoners selected according to scores on the 2 factors of Hare's Psychopathy Checklist--Revised (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 1991). Offenders high on the PCL-R emotional-interpersonal factor, regardless of scores on the social deviance factor, showed diminished skin conductance responses to both pleasant and unpleasant sounds, suggesting a deficit in the action mobilization component of emotional response. Offenders who scored high only on the social deviance factor showed a delay in heart rate differentiation between affective and neutral sounds. These findings indicate abnormal reactivity to both positive and negative emotional stimuli in psychopathic individuals, and suggest differing roles for the 2 facets of psychopathy in affective processing deviations.

TOHU BOHU: Considerations on the nature of noise, in 78 fragments

Noise—a set of unharmonious sounds. This sends us back to the definition of harmony—but harmony in a specific historical context. We see at once how difficult it is to speak simply and plainly about such familiar concepts. By noise is meant essentially our perception of it. In a sense, there is no adequate definition of noise. Noise usually implies loud or unpleasant sounds—we tell kids to stop making a noise. It’s contrasted with silence, which is supposed to be golden, enlightening. John Coltrane’s Ascension [1], in 1965 dismissed as undifferentiated noise, is now seen as a more subtle form of harmony that combines chaotic material and an ascending movement. Ascension broke with the old view of noise. When I first heard the 30-minute A Little Noise in the System (Moog System, 1966) by Pauline Oliveros [2], the power of its development seemed clear. Others who have heard this piece recently all had the same impression. On reflection, this listenability seemed puzzling to me, till I realized that our listening habits—familiarity with Oval, Fennesz and Aphex Twin—have done the trick. With our ear conditioned, we could enjoy all those early subtleties. Ars Nova. When audiences of the 1950s and 1960s first heard Varese, Pousseur, Stockhausen, Berio, Ussachevsky, Yuasa, Dockstader and Mumma, what did they feel? Perhaps a sort of break, an epistemological break, like it must have been for the first audience of Monteverdi’s Orfeo (in Mantua, Italy on 24 February 1607). They left the auditorium completely stunned, because they had never heard anything like it. Noise—an undesirable disturbance additional to the signal and useful data, in the transmission channel of a data processing system. Dionysian celebrations—sound and fury. The sacred aspect of the fear that anything might happen. An indefinable noise in a small readymade by Marcel Duchamp [3]—paradox of an infinitely small noise. Tired of centuries of silence, today’s art galleries and museums are beginning to accept sound installations. Artists, including sculptors, are making a noise. Sounds repeated all day long, traversing corridors and rooms, so that sitting or standing the attendants wear earplugs. Videos rewind and restart, sounds and images go on endlessly, there are loops everywhere. In his most famous installation Vinyl Requiem, Philip Jeck employs no fewer than 180 turntables. His material is the vinyl disc. Most are cheap junk-shop finds. It all started by chance, when he came across an old turntable. The discs are left out of their sleeves to accumulate their own personality of crackles and scratches. The progressive degeneration of original sound material through successive re-recordings is celebrated in Jeck’s textural aesthetic. He works with accumulation and stratification, and also with memory, and so combines recycling with the love of vinyl records [4].

The Listening Subject of Japanese Modernity and His Auditory Double: Citing, Sighting, and Siting the Modern Japanese Woman

From approximately 1887 through World War 1, a surge of commentaries were written and circulated in the Japanese print media about the strange and unpleasant (mimizawarina) sounds issuing from the mouths of schoolgirls. Male intellectuals of various affiliations located the source of their dismay in verbending forms such as texo, noxo, dawa that occurred at the end of utterances. They called such forms schoolgirl speech (jogakuseikotoba). It was jarring to their ears; it sounded vulgar and low class; its prosodic features were described as fast, contracting, and bouncing with a rising intonation: and it was condemned as sugary and shallow. Using the newly available modern textual space of reported speech (Voloshinov 1973), male intellectuals cited what they scornfully referred to as teyo-dawa speech (texoduwii kotoba) in an effort to convince parents and educators to discourage it as a corrupt form of speaking. The irony here is that main of the forms then identified as are today associated with s language, or the feminine style, indexing the figure of the generic urban middle-class woman. The contemporary discourse of Japanese women's language erases this historical emergence from social memory to construct women's language as an essential and timeless part of culture and tradition. Public opinion, responding to a perceived social change toward gender equit recurrently deplores what once again is described as linguistic corruption and the cultural loss of an authentic women's language. As a demographic category. the term referred to girls and young women of the elite classes who attended the women's secondary schools that had been instituted as part of the early Meiji modernization project inspired by Western liberal Enlightenment thought. By the late 19th century, women's secondary education had been incorporated into the state s mandatory education system, and schoolgirls became the immediate and direct target of the state s constitution of the (gendered) national subject b> educating them