How do people quickly respond to scary sounds?
Researchers identified a brain pathway that allows people to quickly detect “scary” sounds and display an emotional response.
2026-03-16
(Press-News.org) Preclinical studies on animals have identified brain pathways that drive quick, protective fear responses to “scary” sounds. New from JNeurosci, Emmanouela Kosteletou-Kassotaki and colleagues, from the University of Barcelona, expand on this work by exploring whether humans also have a brain pathway enabling quick fear responses to certain sounds.
Using publicly accessible data from the Human Connectome Project, the researchers examined links between different pathways in the brain and behavioral measures for emotion and sound processing. A pathway linking two auditory brain areas and a brain region involved in fear was associated with better hearing ability in noisy environments and increased self-reported fearfulness.
While a part of this pathway in the brain was previously described in humans, according to the researchers, this work reveals a new role for this pathway in quickly responding to “scary” sounds. Says Kosteletou-Kassotaki, “This pathway may be involved in the unconscious processing of acoustic fear, paralleling an already established pathway for unconscious processing of visual fear.”
Elaborating on future experimental directions, Kosteletou-Kassotaki adds, “We want to see the link between this pathway and brain activity of participants exposed to fearful sounds. Given the implications of this work for individuals with high anxiety levels or psychiatric disorders, we also plan to examine whether this pathway is more strongly engaged in these populations.”
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About JNeurosci
JNeurosci was launched in 1981 as a means to communicate the findings of the highest quality neuroscience research to the growing field. Today, the journal remains committed to publishing cutting-edge neuroscience that will have an immediate and lasting scientific impact, while responding to authors' changing publishing needs, representing breadth of the field and diversity in authorship.
About The Society for Neuroscience
The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 35,000 members in more than 95 countries.
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[Press-News.org] How do people quickly respond to scary sounds?
Researchers identified a brain pathway that allows people to quickly detect “scary” sounds and display an emotional response.
