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2026
Pain
Parenting and empathy capabilities drive brain response to pain cues in baby cries
Fauchon, C., Corvin, S., Faillenot, I., Patural, H., Reby, D., Peyron, R., & Mathevon, N.
Pain cries induce more specialized brain activation in parents than in nonparents, with greater connectivity within and between networks involved in mentalizing, emotional regulation, and vigilance. Mothers show higher overall connectome activity than fathers. Yet, it is among parents with the greatest emotional empathy -both fathers and mothers- that vocal roughness (a marker of distress in baby cries) most actively recruits the parental vigilance brain network.
2025
PNAS
Chants across seven traditions share acoustic traits that enhance subjective relaxation
Canessa-Pollard, V., Anikin, A. & Reby, D.
Across different cultures, chants share common characteristics such as flat and slow-changing intonation, consistent and uninterrupted voicing in a comfortably low pitch range, minimal vibrato-like inflections, and a high proportion of mid-central vowels. The impact of these acoustic features on subjective well-being, particularly in terms of promoting relaxation, implying that the acoustic form of chants has evolved culturally to optimize listener relaxation.
2024
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
The role of loudness in vocal intimidation
Anikin, A., Valente, D., Pisanski, K., Cornec, C., Bryant, G. A., & Reby, D.
Speakers can intimidate by being loud or by lowering voice frequency: low frequency appears to work best for size exaggeration, whereas loudness is more effective for displaying strength and aggression. However, it is physiologically difficult to achieve both simultaneously, making then low-and-loud combination an honest index of physical formidability and the elusive key to vocal intimidation.
2024
Communications Psychology
Humans need auditory experience to produce typical volitional nonverbal vocalizations
Pisanski, K., Reby, D., & Oleszkiewicz, A.
Deaf adults produce unconventional vocalizations of aggression and pain that are unusually high-pitched, unarticulated, and with extremely few harsh-sounding nonlinear phenomena compared to controls. Listeners are less accurate in identifying the intended emotions of vocalizations produced by deaf vocalizers than by controls. Vocal learning in humans may thus be required not only for speech, but also to acquire the full repertoire of volitional non-linguistic vocalizations.
2022
Current Biology
Adults learn to identify pain in babies’ cries
Corvin, S., Fauchon, C., Peyron, R., Reby, D., & Mathevon, N.
Detecting that a baby’s cry expresses pain requires learning. Adults with no experience with babies are unable to identify whether a cry is a pain cry or a mild discomfort cry. People with prior experience of babies identify a baby’s pain cries without having heard these cries before. Parents of very young children are able to identify the pain cries of a baby who is completely unfamiliar to them.
2021
Nature Communications
Efficacy in deceptive vocal exaggeration of human body size
Pisanski, K., & Reby, D.
We examine how humans use and perceive vocal signals related to body size. The research combines acoustic analysis of vocal signals with psychoacoustic experiments to investigate whether listeners can detect and correct for deceptive exaggeration or attenuation of perceived size. We show that human listeners can detect deceptive vocal signals produced by vocalisers who volitionally shift their voice frequencies to exaggerate or attenuate their perceived size.
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