THE TERM GROWL TYPICALLY REFERS TO LOW-PITCHED,rough sounds uttered by animals. Humans occasionally use growl-like voices to express excessive emotions. Acoustically characterized by loud dynamics and low values of the harmonic-to-noise ratio, growl-like sounds usually express anger and excitement associated with aggression. We propose a biomechanical model relating the aggressive characteristic of the growl-like timbre to the motor mechanisms underlying growl production in humans, highlighting how an abdominal muscle contraction enhances spine stability, which plays a critical role in physical attacks. This model was supported by the experimental data of activation of the deepest abdominal muscle during resting, singing, and growling. We found a significant positive correlation between the abdominal muscle activity associated with producing voice and the perceived aggressiveness intensity of voice. The cognition of growl-like sounds is discussed from the perspectives of biomechanics, evolutionary biology, and cognitive science.
Songs that convey sorrowful emotions enjoy widespread popularity. The expressions and effects of negative emotions vary considerably across cultures and musical forms. This study explores the physiological responses to five popular "heartbreak" songs, focusing on the relationships between the temporal dynamics of emotion and the verse-chorus form. Listeners' skin conductance and finger temperature were used to infer levels of arousal and relaxation, and the analysis of these time-series data was guided by a priori knowledge of the musical form. We found that two particular time periods in these songs, the passage preceding the chorus and the entrance of the chorus, evoked significant skin conductance responses. Given that the chorus is usually the most favorite element of a popular song, these two responses may reflect the elevated arousal associated with the feelings of "wanting" and "liking", respectively. Moreover, the average finger temperature exhibited a U-shaped curve across each song. The significant decreases of finger temperature within the first part of songs revealed an accumulation of negative emotions in listeners, whereas the significant increases of finger temperature within the second part may reflect a release, resolution, or regulation of negative emotions. Our findings shed new light on the rewarding nature of the chorus and the cathartic effects associated with the versechorus form of heartbreak songs.
Tonal languages make use of pitch variation for distinguishing lexical semantics, and their melodic richness seems comparable to that of music. The present study investigated a novel priming effect of melody on the pitch processing of Mandarin speech. When a spoken Mandarin utterance is preceded by a musical melody, which mimics the melody of the utterance, the listener is likely to perceive this utterance as song. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural substrates of this speech-to-song transformation. Pitch contours of spoken utterances were modified so that these utterances can be perceived as either speech or song. When modified speech (target) was preceded by a musical melody (prime) that mimics the speech melody, a task of judging the melodic similarity between the target and prime was associated with increased activity in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and superior/middle temporal gyrus (STG/MTG) during target perception. We suggest that the pars triangularis of the right IFG may allocate attentional resources to the multi-modal processing of speech melody, and the STG/MTG may integrate the phonological and musical (melodic) information of this stimulus. These results are discussed in relation to subvocal rehearsal, a speech-to-song illusion, and song perception.
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