How our perception of sound affects our response.

No brain is the same. Therefore, not everyone reacts the same to certain sounds. The majority of people find comfort in the sound of rain and tend to feel discomfort to the sound of chalk being scraped against a blackboard [1]. In the context of music, it is well known that we all have our own preference to what we like listening to. Some of us like listening to classical Beethoven music and others prefer rock music. These responses might be due to past experiences or we may also have natural responses to the sounds [1].

The effect a sound can be altered by shifting the modulation rate. This can change the entire emotional response that the listener has. This theory was proven by a neuroscientist called Seth Horowitz, who used different sound samples and altered them to change them from pleasant to unpleasant and vice versa. An example of one of his alterations is of a sound of a cat purring which was speed up to sound like a bee sound. His other example was one of meal worms eating a bat carcass. Initially he doesn't tell the listener what the sound is and instead speaks about what it sounds like...the sound of rain falling on a roof. Then, when he announces what it is, the relaxation feeling that you had from what you thought was rain is changed to disgusted. This, I feel, conveys the impact of sound and the perception of sound on our emotions. To put this into practice we could have a scene in a film where it is raining. If we put that meal worms eating a bat carcass sound sample into that scene to represent the rain the listeners would believe that the sound is rain [2].

 

Sources:
[1] http://masteringeft.com/masteringblog/about-meditation/meditation-articles/1861-2/
[2] http://www.npr.org/2012/09/07/160766898/sound-a-major-emotional-driver-for-humans