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    Wissenschaftler stellen fest, dass aztekische „Todespfiffe“ seltsame Auswirkungen auf das Gehirn der Zuhörer haben

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    10 Comments

    1. hoovervillain on

      “The psychoacoustic experiments carried out in the study revealed that the brain perceives sound as both natural and artificial, creating a feeling of ambiguity that captures mental attention.”

      This sounds like the Uncanny Valley

    2. thebelsnickle1991 on

      **Abstract**

      Many ancient cultures used musical tools for social and ritual procedures, with the Aztec skull whistle being a unique exemplar from postclassic Mesoamerica. Skull whistles can produce softer hiss-like but also aversive and scream-like sounds that were potentially meaningful either for sacrificial practices, mythological symbolism, or intimidating warfare of the Aztecs. However, solid psychoacoustic evidence for any theory is missing, especially how human listeners cognitively and affectively respond to skull whistle sounds. Using psychoacoustic listening and classification experiments, we show that skull whistle sounds are predominantly perceived as aversive and scary and as having a hybrid natural-artificial origin. Skull whistle sounds attract mental attention by affectively mimicking other aversive and startling sounds produced by nature and technology. They were psychoacoustically classified as a hybrid mix of being voice- and scream-like but also originating from technical mechanisms. Using human neuroimaging, we furthermore found that skull whistle sounds received a specific decoding of the affective significance in the neural auditory system of human listeners, accompanied by higher-order auditory cognition and symbolic evaluations in fronto-insular-parietal brain systems. Skull whistles thus seem unique sound tools with specific psycho-affective effects on listeners, and Aztec communities might have capitalized on the scary and scream-like nature of skull whistles.

      [Source](https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-024-00157-7)

    3. RunDNA on

      > Clay death whistles, which resemble a human skull and produce a scream-like sound, not only frightened listeners in ancient times, but also had a profound effect on the human brain’s ability to increase states of alarm and fear.

      If I was a horror movie director, I’d try including some on my next soundtrack.

    4. Izawwlgood on

      In the list of things I’m curious about, but not THAT curious about…

    6. eccentricbananaman on

      I wonder how effective these would be if used by a few dozen people in a large protest.

    7. Fecal_Forger on

      Is it similar to Taco’s ‘brown note’ that he sold to the DOD?

    9. whiskeytown79 on

      I wonder if the effect is also produced in the brain of the person using the whistle. The article doesn’t say.

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