ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2025
Nonlinear acoustic phenomena affect the perception of pain in human baby cries.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Distress vocalizations ofCurrent zoology · 2026Article
- Nonlinear acoustic phenomena tune the adults' facial thermal response to baby cries with the cry amplitude envelope.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Article
- Nonlinear phenomena in vertebrate vocalizations: mechanisms and communicative functions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Nonlinear phenomena in animal vocalizations: do they reflect alternative functional modes of voice control, 'leaked' cues to quality or condition, or both?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- How to analyse and manipulate nonlinear phenomena in voice recordings.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Emotions mediate nonlinear phenomena production in the vocalizations of two ape species.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Acoustic context and dynamics of nonlinear phenomena in mammalian calls: the case of puppy whines.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Nonlinear acoustic phenomena affect the perception of pain in human baby cries.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Rough is salient: a conserved vocal niche to hijack the brain's salience system.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
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7 authors.
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Abstract
What makes the painful cries of human babies so difficult to ignore? Vocal traits known as 'nonlinear phenomena' are prime candidates. These acoustic irregularities are common in babies' cries and are typically associated with high levels of distress or pain. Despite the vital importance of cries for a baby's survival, how these nonlinear phenomena drive pain perception in adult listeners has not previously been systematically investigated. Here, by combining acoustic analyses of cries recorded in different contexts with playback experiments using natural and synthetic cries, we show that baby cries expressing acute pain are characterized by a pronounced presence of different nonlinear phenomena, and that these nonlinear phenomena drive pain evaluation by adult listeners. While adult listeners rated all cries presenting any of these nonlinear phenomena as expressing more pain, they were particularly sensitive to the presence of chaos. Our results thus show that nonlinear phenomena, especially chaos, encode pain information in baby cries and may be critically helpful for the development of vocal-based tools for monitoring babies' needs in the context of paediatric care.This article is part of the theme issue 'Nonlinear phenomena in vertebrate vocalizations: mechanisms and communicative functions'.
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