2023-07-17 04:57:10
The teeth, also known as shyness or grima, is an unpleasant reaction and rejection that we suffer from certain sound, tactile or visual stimuli. Likewise, it can be triggered simply by remembering the sensation, it is not essential to hear the sound.
Surely we have all experienced how the creaking sound of chalk on a blackboard or that of a fork on the surface of a plate causes us a feeling of discomfort, makes us shrug our shoulders, make our skin crawl, to increase our muscle tension, to open our mouths and to clench our teeth.
A reaction orchestrated by the cerebral amygdala
Now, is there a pattern of sounds that triggers teething? We know that our ear is capable of hearing sounds in a frequency range that oscillates between 20 and 20,000 Hz, but we had yet to define the range of frequencies in which the denture occurs.
The answer came in 2006 when the Ig Nobel Prize was awarded to a study that concluded that it is the medium frequencies –between 2,000 and 5,000 Hz- that bother us the most, to which we are most sensitive.
Despite the fact that we do not have a definitive theory on the biological origin of the denture, everything seems to indicate that it would be linked to the survival instinct. Somehow our brain processes the sounds and generates, through the autonomic or vegetative nervous system -which controls involuntary reactions- a reflex response.
A study carried out by Sukhbinder Kumar, from the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Newcastle, concluded that the reaction would originate at the level of the cerebral amygdala, a region related to emotions and fear. It is an area the size of a lentil in which emotional keys are inscribed and which acts as a sentinel of our survival.
The scientists performed fMRIs on thirteen volunteers who were subjected to different sounds, both pleasant and unpleasant. When the sounds oscillated between 2,000 and 5,000 hertz they were described as unpleasant and the amygdala was activated. From there, warning signals were triggered in the cerebral cortex.
hides an evolutionary reaction
Based on all this, some scholars argue that an evolutionary reaction is hidden behind the teeth, similar to what we currently observe in some of the apes such as the macaque. When a predator is prowling the area, these catarrhine primates often make high-pitched, shrill sounds as an alarm signal. Coincidentally, chimpanzees make their alert sounds at frequencies between 2,000 and 5,000 Hz, the same frequency range that the Newcastle University researchers found.
To explain it from an evolutionary perspective, it should be taken into account that, with the development of tools, social organization and cooking, we have considerably reduced our dependence on teeth and nails. In fact, our teeth are weaker and our nails much weaker than other mammals.
Finally, a curiosity, a few years ago Trevox Cox, from the University of Salford, carried out a survey to find out what is the most unpleasant sound that exists for human beings. With more than a million votes, the first place went to what a person does when they vomit. Does it match yours?
#sounds #cringe