Affect & Arousal

It has been argued that emotion, pain and cognitive control are functionally segregated in distinct subdivisions of the cingulate cortex. However, recent observations encourage a fundamentally different view. Imaging studies demonstrate that negative affect, pain and cognitive control activate an overlapping region of the dorsal cingulate — the anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC). Anatomical studies reveal that the aMCC constitutes a hub where information about reinforcers can be linked to motor centres responsible for expressing affect and executing goal-directed behaviour. Computational modelling and other kinds of evidence suggest that this intimacy reflects control processes that are common to all three domains. These observations compel a reconsideration of the dorsal cingulate's contribution to negative affect and pain.

Evidence from imaging and anatomical studies suggests that the midcingulate cortex (MCC) is a dynamic hub lying at the interface of affect and cognition. In particular, this neural system appears to integrate information about conflict and punishment in order to optimize behavior in the face of action-outcome uncertainty. In a series of meta-analyses, we show how recent human electrophysiological research provides compelling evidence that frontal-midline theta signals reflecting MCC activity are moderated by anxiety and predict adaptive behavioral adjustments. These findings underscore the importance of frontal theta activity to a broad spectrum of control operations. We argue that frontal-midline theta provides a neurophysiologically plausible mechanism for optimally adjusting behavior to uncertainty, a hallmark of situations that elicit anxiety and demand cognitive control. These observations compel a new perspective on the mechanisms guiding motivated learning and behavior and provide a framework for understanding the role of the MCC in temperament and psychopathology.

Individuals show marked variation in their responses to threat. Such individual differences in behavioral inhibition play a profound role in mental and physical well-being. Behavioral inhibition is thought to reflect variation in the sensitivity of a distributed neural system responsible for generating anxiety and organizing defensive responses to threat and punishment. Although progress has been made in identifying the key constituents of this behavioral inhibition system in humans, the involvement of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) remains unclear. Here, we acquired self-reported Behavioral Inhibition System Sensitivity scores and high-resolution electroencephalography from a large sample (n= 51). Using the enhanced spatial resolution afforded by source modeling techniques, we show that individuals with greater tonic (resting) activity in right-posterior DLPFC rate themselves as more behaviorally inhibited. This observation provides novel support for recent conceptualizations of behavioral inhibition and clues to the mechanisms that might underlie variation in threat-induced negative affect.

Stress is a universal experience that can fundamentally alter neural responses to incoming information. Recent research has begun to clarify the substrates of stress-induced modulations of neural processing. Based on this work, it has been hypothesized that stress and anxiety shift the balance of attention away from a task-directed mode, governed by prefrontal cortex (PFC), to a sensory-vigilance mode, governed by the amygdala and other threat-sensitive regions. A key untested prediction of this framework is that stress exerts dissociable effects on different stages of information processing. Here, we exploited the temporal resolution afforded by event-related potentials (ERPs) to disentangle the impact of stress on sensory-vigilance, indexed by early perceptual activity, from its impact on task-directed cognition, indexed by later postperceptual activity. Results indicated that threat-of-shock produced sustained increases in both the experience and expression of stress, measured using retrospective ratings and concurrent facial electromyography (EMG). During this same period, stress double dissociated the early sensory-specific and later task-directed (postperceptual) processing of emotionally-neutral stimuli. In particular, stress amplified N1 (184-236 ms) and attenuated P3 (316-488 ms) visually-evoked activity. These observations provide compelling new evidence that stress can exert fundamentally different consequences across successive stages of information processing. Consistent with recent suggestions, stress amplified earlier extrastriate activity in a manner consistent with vigilance for threat, but disrupted later activity associated with the evaluation of task-relevant information. These results provide a novel basis for understanding how stress can modulate information processing in everyday life and disorders characterized by hypersensitivity to threat.

Emotional trauma is transmitted across generations. For example, children witnessing their parent expressing fear to specific sounds or images begin to express fear to those cues. Within normal range, this is adaptive, although pathological fear, such as occurs in posttraumatic stress disorder or specific phobias, is also socially transmitted to children and is thus of clinical concern. Here, using a rodent model, we report a mother-to-infant transfer of fear to a novel peppermint odor, which is dependent on the mother expressing fear to that smell in pups' presence. Examination of pups' neural activity using c-Fos early gene expression and 14 C 2-deoxyglucose autoradiography during mother-to-infant fear transmission revealed lateral and basal amygdala nuclei activity, with a causal role highlighted by pharmacological inactivation of pups' amygdala preventing the fear transmission. Maternal presence was not needed for fear transmission, because an elevation of pups' corticosterone induced by the odor of the frightened mother along with a novel peppermint odor was sufficient to produce pups' subsequent aversion to that odor. Disruption of axonal tracts from the Grueneberg ganglion, a structure implicated in alarm chemosignaling, or blockade of pups' alarm odor-induced corticosterone increase prevented transfer of fear. These memories are acquired at younger ages compared with amygdala-dependent odorshock conditioning and are more enduring following minimal conditioning. Our results provide clues to understanding transmission of specific fears across generations and its dependence upon maternal induction of pups' stress response paired with the cue to induce amygdala-dependent learning plasticity. Results are discussed within the context of caregiver emotional responses and adaptive vs. pathological fears social transmission. necklace glomeruli | pheromone | olfaction | PTSD | social referencing

The goal of this study was to improve our understanding of men's sexual response and its components as well as the factors or types of situations that men describe as facilitating or interfering with sexual arousal. Six focus groups, involving 50 mostly white, heterosexual men (M age = 35.2 years; range, 18-70), were conducted. As it was previously found in women (Graham, Sanders, Milhausen, & McBride, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 33, 527-538, 2004), men described a wide range of physical (genital as well as nongenital) and cognitive/affective cues for sexual arousal. Also, men described the relationship between sexual desire and arousal as being variable and complex, presented a wide range of factors that increased or decreased sexual arousal, and showed substantial variability in both the importance and direction of their effects. The findings may help further development of models of sexual response and inform discussions about gender differences in sexual desire and arousal.

Some individuals are endowed with a biology that renders them more reactive to novelty and potential threat. When extreme, this
anxious temperament (AT) confers elevated risk for the development of anxiety, depression and substance abuse. These disorders
are highly prevalent, debilitating and can be challenging to treat. The high-risk AT phenotype is expressed similarly in children and
young monkeys and mechanistic work demonstrates that the central (Ce) nucleus of the amygdala is an important substrate.
Although it is widely believed that the flow of information across the structural network connecting the Ce nucleus to other brain
regions underlies primates’ capacity for flexibly regulating anxiety, the functional architecture of this network has remained poorly
understood. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in anesthetized young monkeys and quietly resting
children with anxiety disorders to identify an evolutionarily conserved pattern of functional connectivity relevant to early-life
anxiety. Across primate species and levels of awareness, reduced functional connectivity between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,
a region thought to play a central role in the control of cognition and emotion, and the Ce nucleus was associated with increased
anxiety assessed outside the scanner. Importantly, high-resolution 18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography imaging
provided evidence that elevated Ce nucleus metabolism statistically mediates the association between prefrontal-amygdalar
connectivity and elevated anxiety. These results provide new clues about the brain network underlying extreme early-life anxiety
and set the stage for mechanistic work aimed at developing improved interventions for pediatric anxiety.

Research on the neural substrates of emotion has found evidence for cortical asymmetries for aspects of emotion. A recent article by Nicholls et al. has used a new imaging method to interrogate facial movement in 3D to assess possible asymmetrical action during expressions of happiness and sadness. Greater leftsided movement, particularly during expressions of sadness was observed. These findings have implications for understanding hemispheric differences in emotion and lend support to the notion that aspects of emotion processing might be differentially localized in the two hemispheres.

There is much research that shows people’s mood can affect their activities. This paper argues that this also applies to programmers, especially their debugging. Literature-based framework is presented linking programming with various cognitive activities as well as linking cognitive activities with moods. Further, the effect of mood on debugging was tested in two experiments. In the first experiment, programmers (n = 72) saw short movie clips selected for their ability to provoke specific moods. Afterward, they completed a debugging test. Results showed the video clips had a significant effect on programmers’ debugging performance; especially, there was a significant difference after watching low- and high-arousal-evoking video clips. In the second experiment, programmers’ mood was manipulated by asking participants (n = 19) to dry run algorithms for at least 16 min. They performed some physical exercises before continuing dry running algorithms again. The results showed a significant increase in arousal and valence that coincided with an improvement in programmers’ task performance after the physical exercises. Together, this suggests that programmers’ moods influence some programming tasks such as debugging.

"Introduction. Traditionally, sexual desire is understood to occur spontaneously, but more recent models propose that desire responds to sexual stimuli.
Aims. To experimentally assess whether sexual stimuli increased sexual desire; to compare how sexual arousal and desire responded to three modalities of sexual stimuli: erotic story, unstructured fantasy, and the Imagined Social Situation Exercise (ISSE).
Methods. In an online study, participants (128 women, 98 men) were randomly assigned to one of four arousal conditions (ISSE, story, fantasy, or neutral), and then completed desire measures. In the ISSE, participants imagined and wrote about a positive sexual encounter with a self-defined attractive person.
Main Outcome Measures. Sexual arousal (perceived genital, psychological, and perceived autonomic), anxiety, positive and negative affect, and state sexual desire via self-report measures pre- and post-condition; “trait” desire via the Sexual Desire Inventory post-condition.
Results. All three sexual conditions significantly increased sexual arousal and positive affect compared with the neutral condition, with trends for higher arousal to unstructured fantasy than the ISSE or story conditions. Sexual conditions significantly increased scores on state measures of sexual desire. In addition, sexual context influenced measurement of “trait” solitary sexual desire in women, such that women reported significantly higher trait desire after the neutral and ISSE conditions vs. fantasy.
Conclusion. Results highlight the responsiveness of sexual desire, problems with measurement of desire as a long-term trait, trade-offs of using the ISSE and other stimuli in sexuality research, and the need to address context in discussions of women’s and men’s desire."

Although the Ancients placed great emphasis on delivery, modern rhetorical scholars often overlook the oral dimensions of speech. Speech is powerful because of its ability to elicit a somatic response. Scholars in other disciplines are examining how speech affects the body, but contemporary rhetorical scholarship often overlooks their findings. This essay reviews scholarship both inside and outside of communication studies that demonstrates the interplay between rhetoric and orality, paying particular attention to how scientific scholarship can inform our conception of ethos and pathos. By drawing together scientific and rhetorical scholarship, scholars in all disciplines can gain a greater understanding of how speech affects the mind, body, and soul.

"Sexual stimuli increase testosterone (T) or cortisol (C) in males of a variety of species, including humans, and just thinking about sex increases T in women. We investigated whether sexual thoughts change T or C in men and whether hormone measures (baseline, post-activity, and changes) correlate
with psychological sexual arousal. We used the Imagined Social Situation Exercise to assess how hormones respond to and correlate with sexual thoughts and arousal relative to three control conditions: neutral, stressful, and positive. A total of 99 men provided a baseline saliva sample, imagined and wrote about a sexual or control situation, and provided a second saliva
sample15 min later.Results indicated that, for participants in the sexual condition, higher baseline and post-activity C corresponded to larger increases in self- reported sexual and autonomic arousal. Although sexual thoughts increased sexual arousal, they did not change T or C compared to control conditions. Our results suggest that sexual thoughts are not sufficient to change T or C in men,but C may facilitate sexual arousal by directing energy towards a sexual situation."

Background: Anxious temperament (AT) is identifiable early in life and predicts the later development of anxiety disorders and
depression. Neuropeptide Y (NPY) is a putative endogenous anxiolytic neurotransmitter that adaptively regulates responses to stress and
might confer resilience to stress-related psychopathology. With a well-validated nonhuman primate model of AT, we examined
expression of the NPY system in the central nucleus (Ce) of the amygdala, a critical neural substrate for extreme anxiety.
Methods: In 24 young rhesus monkeys, we measured Ce messenger RNA (mRNA) levels of all members of the NPY system that are
detectable in the Ce with quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction. We then examined the relationship between these mRNA
levels and both AT expression and brain metabolism.
Results: Lower mRNA levels of neuropeptide Y receptor 1 (NPY1R) and NPY5R but not NPY or NPY2R in the Ce predicted elevated AT;
mRNA levels for NPY1R and NPY5R in the motor cortex were not related to AT. In situ hybridization analysis provided for the first time a
detailed description of NPY1R and NPY5R mRNA distribution in the rhesus amygdala and associated regions. Lastly, mRNA levels for these
two receptors in the Ce predicted metabolic activity in several regions that have the capacity to regulate the Ce.
Conclusions: Decreased NPY signaling in the Ce might contribute to the altered metabolic activity that is a component of the neural
substrate underlying AT. This suggests that enhancement of NPY signaling might reduce the risk to develop psychopathology.

Previous studies utilizing thermal imaging have suggested that face and body temperature increase during periods of sexual arousal. Additionally, facial skin temperature changes are associated with other forms of emotional arousal, including fear and stress. The present study investigated whether interpersonal social contact can elicit facial temperature changes. Study 1: Infrared images were taken during a standardized interaction with a same- and opposite-sex experimenter utilizing skin contact in a number of potentially high-intimate (face and chest) and low-intimate (arm and palm) locations. Facial skin temperatures significantly increased from baseline during the face and chest contact, and these temperature shifts were larger when contact was made by an opposite-sex experimenter. Study 2: The topography of facial temperature change was investigated in 5 regions: forehead, periorbital, nose, mouth and cheeks. Increased temperature in the periorbital, nose and mouth regions predicted overall facial temperature shifts to social contact. Our findings demonstrate skin temperature changes are a sensitive index of arousal during interpersonal interactions.

Psychophysiological methods provide covert and reliable measurements of affective user experience (UX). The nature of affective UX in interactive entertainment, such as digital games, is currently not well understood. With the dawn of new gaming consoles, scientific methodologies for studying user interaction in an immersive entertainment context are needed. This paper reports a study on the influence of interaction modes (Playstation 2 game controller vs. Wii remote and Nunchuk) on subjective experience assessment and brain activity measured with electroencephalography (EEG). Results indicate that EEG alpha and delta power correlate with negative affect and tension when using regular game controller input. EEG beta and gamma power seem to be related to the feeling of possible action in spatial presence with a PS2 game controller. Delta as well as theta power correlate with self-location using a Wii remote and Nunchuk.

Three studies investigating differences in people's appraisals of worry and anxiety situations are presented. First, data from a study by Reisenzein and Spielhofer (1994) were reanalyzed. Second, two further studies were conducted to replicate the findings of the reanalysis and to explore whether any additional appraisal dimensions were relevant for a differentiation of worry and anxiety situations. In sum, results showed that appraisals associated with situations in which worry and anxiety were experienced differed on eight appraisal dimensions. Compared to experiences of anxiety, experiences of worry were more often associated with positive self-evaluation, positive social-relationship evaluation, feelings of closeness, and sentiments of importance, and less often associated with feelings of inferiority. Moreover, in worry experiences, focus was often not on the self, but on other persons. Finally, with respect to temporal dimensions, worry situations were less often associated with notions of suddenness and momentariness than anxiety situations. Implications of these findings are discussed with respect to models of emotional appraisal and research on worry and generalized anxiety disorder.

The Anastenaria are Orthodox Christians in Northern Greece who observe a unique annual ritual cycle focused on two festivals, dedicated to Saint Constantine and Saint Helen. The festivals involve processions, music, dancing and animal sacrifices, and culminate in an electrifying fire-walking ritual. Carrying the sacred icons of the saints, participants dance over hot coals as the saint moves them. The Burning Saints presents an analysis of these rituals and the psychology behind them.

Based on long-term fieldwork, The Burning Saints traces the historical development and sociocultural context of the Greek fire-walking rituals. As a cognitive ethnography, the book aims to identify the social, psychological and neurobiological factors that may be involved and to explore the role of emotional and physiological arousal in the performance of such ritual. A study of participation, experience and meaning, The Burning Saints presents a highly original analysis of how mental processes can shape social and religious behaviour.

What drives entrepreneurs despite lower financial returns and various setbacks?  Researchers have mainly studied why entrepreneurs deviate from optimal decisions; risk propensity, optimism, and overconfidence represent such factors.  We offer another perspective to capture the drivers of entrepreneurship, using a hedonic psychology framework.  We analyzed entrepreneurs’ blog diaries and examined a series of decisions and their contexts.  We suggest that entrepreneurs make rational decisions to maximize their happiness and well-being, and they engage in certain activities to manipulate their happiness level.  This study contributes to entrepreneurship research by suggesting alternative drivers of entrepreneurship: contentment and happiness.

We examined how proneness to experience feelings of aggression in frustrating situations and neuroticism are related to threemood dimensions – tense arousal (TA), energetic arousal (EA) and hedonic tone (HT) – measured before and after an exam. Individuals high in sensitivity to frustration had low HT and EA, and high TA after completing the exam. The analysis revealed that frustration was significantly associated with TA, even after controlling for neuroticism and TA before exam. Neuroticism was significantly correlated with mood in both measurements. The results suggest that the relationship between individual differences in response to frustration and mood is sensitive to situational factors, while neuroticism is rather chronically associated with negative emotionality.

A variety of recent researches in Audio Emotion Recognition (AER) outlines high performance and retrieval accuracy results. However, in most works music is considered as the original sound content that conveys the identified emotions. One of the music characteristics that is found to represent a fundamental means for conveying emotions are the rhythm- related acoustic cues. Although music is an important aspect of everyday life, there are numerous non-linguistic and non- musical sounds surrounding humans, generally defined as sound events (SEs). Despite this enormous impact of SEs to humans, a scarcity of investigations regarding AER from SEs is observed. There are only a few recent investigations concerned with SEs and AER, presenting a semantic connection between the former and the listener’s triggered emotion. In this work we analytically investigate the connection of rhythm-related characteristics of a wide range of common SEs with the arousal of the listener using sound events with semantic content. To this aim, several feature evaluation and classification tasks are conducted using different ranking and classification algorithms. High accuracy results are obtained, demonstrating a significant relation of SEs rhythmic characteristics to the elicited arousal.

The stereotyped nature of the skin conductance response (SCR) waveform has recently inspired several dynamic modeling approaches to the process of SCR. The suggested models differ: (i) in the order of the linear differential equation representing the process, and (ii) the neurobiological interpretation of the system parameters. While several research groups consider the sympathetic sudomotor nerve activity as the input signal in their models of the SCR, we assume that the initial neural event and feedback regulatory mechanisms that we can comprise with our models take place in the central brain structures. Here we demonstrate a refinement of the system identification procedure with skin conductance response signal, in order to test the thesis of the central meaning of the model's parameters.

"This article offers an approach to writing about the qualitative experience of change in an educational context. The analyst spent four years studying how children use technology to augment their literacy practices in the Midlands of the UK. He simultaneously became involved with free parties in the district that offered social celebratory gatherings using technology to generate dance music. Rather than separating these experiences into categories such as work and play, the analyst has drawn them together through the practice of techno-shamanism. To summarise this approach, the researcher’s understandings about techno-literacy change through research into the behaviours of the youth of the area who are present in the schools that took part in the study. He also changes as he dances and organises parties that represent an augmentation of the self through technology. Thus techno-shamanism synthesises an exploration of these
changes and the transformative power that technology offers at its most intense and socially inclusive."

The aim of this study was to survey the effect of arousal by the presence of audience and music and their comparison on learning and performance of basketball dribbling. Subjects were 36 healthy and non-athlete girls (mean and SD of age 21.8±2.23 years, height 163.4±6.19cm and weight 57.5±10.13kg) were divided into three groups of audience (n=12), music (n=12) and control (n=12) randomly. Training protocol in the acquisition stage included basketball dribbling of Harrison test for 6 weeks, 3 sessions per week, and 30 seconds per session with the presence of motivational factors in separate groups. Score of dribbling test was record per session, then posttest was carried out and finally after two weeks of detraining, retention test was performed in the same condition and transfer test like the real condition of competitions (with the presence of music and audience) was performed 24 hours later. Rest heart rate index was used to maintain the subjects in the same level of arousal. To analyze the data, one-way ANOVA test, ANOVA with repeated measures and Bonferroni post hoc test was used. Results showed that all groups improved their skill learning in the acquisition stage. Also, there was a significant difference in basketball dribbling scores among the groups in the acquisition stage (p=0.0001) and this difference was higher in the control group (i.e. audience and music groups had weaker performance in the posttest of acquisition stage). But in retention and transfer tests, music and audience groups were at an advantage; audience group achieved the highest scores in retention test and music and audience groups gained higher significant scores than control group in transfer test (p=0.0001).

L'automaticité du traitement évaluatif est l'une des questions fondamentales dans le domaine de la psychologie cognitive des émotions. Le paradigme d'amorçage affectif a été spécifiquement mis au point dans le but d'apporter des réponses à cette question de l'automaticité. Depuis une vingtaine d'années, ce paradigme a donné lieu à un nombre conséquent de travaux. A l'origine centrées sur l'automaticité du processus d'évaluation, ces recherches se sont rapidement focalisées sur les mécanismes sous-jacents et ont abouti à une dichotomie théorique. Alors que d'un côté, certains travaux suggèrent que l'effet d'amorçage affectif est sous-tendu par un mécanisme de propagation d'activation dans un réseau sémantique à l'instar de l'amorçage sémantique, d'un autre côté, d'autres travaux suggèrent que cet effet est déterminé par un mécanisme de compétition de réponses à l'instar des tâches de compatibilité. La clarification des modèles théoriques de l'amorçage affectif apparait dès lors comme nécessaire afin de permettre une meilleure compréhension de l'effet, aboutissant éventuellement à son utilisation fondée comme mesure indirecte.

The Emotional Brain Revisited tackles various issues at play in the current neuroscientific, psychological, and philosophical research on emotions. The book discusses such topics as the role of amygdala in the emergence of emotions, the place of the affect within the psychological construction of the agent, insights from the research on emotions in animals, and the relation between emotions, rationality, morality, and law. Furthermore, various conceptual controversies underlying the empirical studies on emotions are considered.

Background: Physiological effects of +Gz centrifugation are well known. Psychological functioning combined with +Gz centrifugation also appears to be important, but has not yet been sufficiently studied. This study was designed to evaluate whether mood (energetic arousal, tense arousal, and hedonic tone) is influenced by a centrifuge run with +Gz stress. Method: We examined subjects’ mood four times: 2 h prior to the centrifuge run, 2 min before and after centrifugation, and again 30 min afterwards. Energetic arousal (EA), tense arousal (TA), and hedonic tone (HT) assessments were conducted by the self-reported UWIST Mood Adjective Check List (UMACL). Results: Centrifugation explained 31.6% of EA and 56.9% of TA variance. EA level increased 2 min before centrifugation and remained so until the last measurement. TA was high 2 h prior to the centrifuge run, rose sharply 2 min before centrifugation, and lowered considerably after cessation of the run. The HT level was stable throughout all measurements. Conclusion: The centrifuge run with +Gz acceleration may evoke changes in arousal, but not in subjective enjoyment. Alterations in arousal levels triggered by centrifugation were positive, increasing energy and reducing tension.

Muziek en geluid: een moeilijk evenwicht" door professor dr. Mark Reybrouck VOORWOORD Beste leden, Eind vorig jaar besliste de Vlaamse Gemeenschap werk te maken van de thematiek die we in onze eerste uitgave zo sterk hebben aangekaart: de ratificatie van de internationale Conventie op diversiteit van de Unesco (cfr. Toccata I) Zie hier de mededeling: "Op voorstel van minister-president Kris Peeters en minister Joke Schauvliege -Na advies van de Strategische Adviesraad internationaal Vlaanderen hecht de Vlaamse Regering haar definitieve goedkeuring aan een ontwerpdecreet dat instemt met het UNESCO-Verdrag over de bescherming en de bevordering van de diversiteit van cultuuruitingen, opgemaakt in Parijs op 20 oktober 2005. Het Verdrag moet een rechtsvacuüm op internationaal niveau opvullen door zowel nationaal als internationaal een aantal rechten en plichten vast te leggen ter bescherming en bevordering van de culturele diversiteit. Het belangrijkste principe is het recht van lidstaten om een eigen cultuurbeleid te kunnen voeren. Het ontwerpdecreet wordt ingediend bij het Vlaams Parlement." Met deze beslissing wordt ingegaan op onze vraag. We kunnen dit alleen maar toejuichen en kijken uit in hoeverre het cultuurbeleid in Vlaanderen vanaf nu ook daadwerkelijk respect zal opbrengen voor de aanwezige muzikale diversiteit en een visie zal ontwikkelen die ook gebaseerd is op een artistiekverantwoord en niet louter op een commercieel gedomineerd referentiekader. Deze tweede Toccata handelt over de groteske situatie op het vlak van geluidssterkte: liever 100.000 oordopjes uitdelen op een festival dan een eenvoudige draai aan de knop. Wat bezielt een groot deel van de mensheid om zich bloot te stellen aan levensbedreigend geluid en meer nog, zelfs te hunkeren naar dit volumineus geweld? Hoe valt dit gedrag te verklaren?