Re: Innate responses to sound

[David Mountain <dcm@xxxxxx>]

I suggest that you look into rhythm.  This is a very important cue for
acoustically identifying animal species from the sounds produced by their
movements.  There is a very interesting related literature in vision on
the perception of biological motion.

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David C. Mountain, Ph.D.
Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Boston University
44 Cummington St.
Boston, MA 02215

Email:   dcm@xxxxxx
Website: http://www.bu.edu/dbin/bme/faculty/?prof=dcm
Phone:   (617) 353-4343
FAX:     (617) 353-6766
Office:  ERB 413
On Thu, 22 May 2008, Ross Rochford wrote:

> Hi,
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> I am considering for my thesis an exploration of innate responses to sounds,
> that is, unlearned and presumably having evolved to serve some function. The
> idea of the evolutionary lag where we have evolved to adapt to an
> environment that existed thousands of years ago interests me, I wonder what
> the implications of this are for how we respond to sound and how music
> affects our mood.
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> I am looking for papers (or books) on responses to sound that are likely to
> be innate in humans. Also papers that discuss the evolutionary origins of
> our responses to sound and music and how our past environment (and tasks
> therein, e.g. hunting) have shaped them. I am hoping for the kinds of
> explanations that have been proposed for arachnophobia, that a fear of
> spiders had survival advantage as we may have evolved among poisonous
> spiders.
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> While researching, I found a suggestion that our response to nails on a
> blackboard is because of the similarity (of its spectrum) to the warning
> call of macaque monkeys. Although I don't believe this is an adequate
> explanation (the warning calls don't produce the same response as nails on a
> blackboard in humans), it is similar to what I am looking for.
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> Any suggestions on where to start are greatly appreciated.
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> Ross
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