Human screams can convey at least six emotions
A new study maps out the diversity of our shrieks and wails, raising questions about the evolution of this primal vocalization.
ByMaya Wei-Haas
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Alone in a small, padded room, Sascha Frühholz took a deep breath and unleashed an ear-splitting scream. He was there, in part, because of The Beatles.
Frühholz, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Oslo in Norway, couldn't get videos of the band's 1960s concerts out of his mind. As the music begins to bop, the audience viscerally reacts with joy, shrieking and screaming. There was even a name for this: Beatlemania. "These people don’t have any other way to express this overwhelming elation," he says.