Threat-related corticocortical connectivity elicited by rapid auditory looms

In a recent paper published in Scientific Reports, Karolina Ignatiadis, Roberto Barumerli, Gustavo Deco, Brigitta Tóth, and Robert Baumgartner examine the auditory looming bias, the tendency to respond more strongly to approaching than to receding sounds.

09.04.2026

Using EEG-based connectivity analyses, the study shows that looming sounds engage frontal cortical regions associated with threat and fear processing. These findings advance our understanding of auditory cognition by demonstrating that the looming bias serves as a neural threat-detection mechanism, highlighting how the brain rapidly prioritizes potentially dangerous sounds in the environment.

This publication is part of the Born2Hear project

Read the full journal article in Nature's Scientific Reports.

SCIENTIFIC REPORTS

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Threat-related corticocortical connectivity elicited by rapid auditory looms

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