5 ms·
White noise improves learning by modulating activity in midbrain regions (2014)
- antattack 5y ago"we tested the hypothesis that auditory white noise, when presented during the encoding of scene images, enhances subsequent recognition memory performance and modulates activity within the dopaminergic midbrain" Important highlight is that primary task (of remembering images) did not use (or need to use) auditory sense.
- gfosco 5y agoI got into it because of tinnitus, and used it to sleep, but eventually started using it when working. Years ago in menlo park, with headphones on and white/brown noise drowning out the world. I likened it sensory deprivation, as nothing rises above the noise floor and it can fade away from your attention.
- Afton 5y agoI found that earplugs + headphones with brown/grey noise absolutely made the universe go away. I don't use it now because my work has changed and I work in a single-person office, but I found this super effective at reducing distractions.
- SubiculumCode 5y agoThere are several instances that I know about of machine learning / signal processing methods ( for example empirical mode decomposition) that purposely inject noise into the algorithm to improve accuracy / fidelity / independence. I'm sure that others here can provide better examples than I.
- thenthenthen 5y agoI enjoy some noise, like fan, AC, but get auditory hallucinations from most ‘noise generators’ (apps). I start to hear voices, orchestras tuning etc. Very strange and distracting. I’m thinking it’s my mind trying to make sense of all the random frequencies? Any tips to counter this? ( I could record my fan and play that... in a loooooong loop ;)
- wing-_-nuts 5y agoThis happens to me when listening to a white noise app / machine that has a short loop. You can buy machines that are explicitly non-looping and it's so much better.
- copperx 5y agoWhy would they loop? Creating white noise is one line of bash.
- wing-_-nuts 5y agoMost of these machines are 'multi-function' machines that play crickets / waterfalls, etc in addition to white noise. That sound is best handled by capturing a snippet and looping it over and over again. The same applies for white noise as well unfortunately. Also it's usually a good idea to buy a little machine for this that uses like 5W vs running your computer all night.
- thenthenthen 5y agoIt's crazy they loop, it just takes one transistor in avalanche mode to create white noise. Maybe I should mod my Bose Sleep buds that have ridiculously bad sound quality and short loops (and battery life).
- omnicognate 5y agoIt's easy electronically but if you're writing an app for a device/OS that doesn't implement that capability and expose it to apps you're left with either pseudorandom numbers or a sample. A very long losslessly compressed sample can be good but would require a large download, so in practice these apps generally have short, lossily compressed samples. These samples (and the alternative, pseudorandom numbers) sound absolutely awful. A human mind on the verge of sleep is an insanely powerful signal processing device and recogniser/producer/completer of patterns. Raspberry Pis have hardware random number generators. I use one to generate smoothed brown noise for sleep. It's blissful. I've been meaning to get round to solving this problem on phones, making an app that can, without a ridiculously large download, generate really high quality sleep noise. I have some ideas but it's not an easy problem.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoWhat's the effect size?
- Ensorceled 5y agoI find brain.fm or movie soundtracks work great for study, focus or deep work. I've tried white noise and can, like others, attest that brown or pink are better.
- sn41 5y agoi find pink noise more relaxing than white noise when i want to focus.
- amelius 5y ago> dopaminergic midbrain Could white noise also help with addiction?
- tyjen 5y agoI don't think so. Any music can stimulate the release of dopamine and I would argue that white noise would be on the lower end of that comparison. Plus, the amount of dopamine released from listening to music or white noise would be trivial compared to drugs, alcohol, binge eating, nicotine, video games, or binge-watching TV. And, the tricky thing about addictions is that they're easier to replace than to simply stop, so it's important to find a healthier replacement and then try to taper the newer behavior. I don't see white noise helping directly with addictions because of how imbalanced they are as stimulation sources.
- amelius 5y agoOk, but perhaps you could listen longer to it, e.g. while sleeping.
- fergonco 5y agoAndrew Huberman saying in a podcast that it's not the case for verbal recall: https://youtu.be/Ze2pc6NwsHQ?t=3350 https://youtu.be/Ze2pc6NwsHQ?t=3350 Interesting podcast, btw. got it from HN few days ago.
- bacro 5y agoI got it from HN as well and it is excellent! Kudos for both Andrew and whoever commented a link to it :)
- naasking 5y agoHe's pretty good for sure, but he's a little too excitable on some topics and makes some leaps. I know he's done this on some of his exercise science episodes, for instance, with his discussion of cold therapy.
- bmitc 5y agoI've used these sound machines for years to both sleep and work: https://yogasleep.com/collections/sound-machines/products/dohmclassic# https://yogasleep.com/collections/sound-machines/products/do... For me personally, white-ish noise has always been a calming factor, which allows me to relax and thus concentrate, if I need to.
- eecc 5y agoI prefer pink (and occasionally punk) noise
- mgkimsal 5y agobrown noise for me. brown and grey, mixed.
- izzygonzalez 5y agoWhen I lay down for bed I play a track called Pink Noise for Sleeping on a loop and set a 3 hour alarm that shuts off the music when it runs out. https://music.apple.com/us/album/pink-noise-for-sleeping/1117153467 https://music.apple.com/us/album/pink-noise-for-sleeping/111... When I'm awake I play Lightning Bolt, Oozing Wound and Discordance Axis on repeat. I guess they're so loud they're almost like noise lol
- tines 5y agoPossibly the same reason why people like to listen to music while working? The essential feature common to white noise and music you're familiar with could be the predictability. I know for me a good song (uptempo, not too distracting) can help me block out the outside world and make me feel very productive.
- avgDev 5y agoMusic with words distracts me as I like to 'understand' songs and just enjoy the message. I tried electronic music and as a European it really makes me want to dance, hah. By far the best music for me is classical music. It literally makes tedious things like writing emails, documenting and coding much more enjoyable.
- zone411 5y agoThere are many genres of electronic music and only some are dance-oriented. If you want to check them out, try non-vocal playlists on https://www.di.fm/playlists https://www.di.fm/playlists or on YouTube or Spotify.
- rbolkey 5y agoAnother option is to listen to music that's in a different language. I have a playlist that I affectionately call "French Bistro".
- elliekelly 5y agoI listen to the “radio” soundtrack from The Sims for the same reason. The songs have lyrics but they’re too indecipherable to be distracting.
- wonderwonder 5y agoI do the same with Scandavian music like Wadruna and then whatever youtube throws at me. No idea what they are saying but it's a nice melodic music that doesn't distract me and no worries about the song getting stuck in my head.
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- rimzyy 5y ago
- tyjen 5y agoNoise in general helps in several area in my life: - Working out, pump up music for motivation. - Cleaning or chores, enjoyable music or podcasts for motivation or filling space. - Light, shallow work, lo-fi to upbeat chill without vocals for motivation and masking environmental noise. - Deep, concentrated work, white or pink noise for masking environmental noise. Depending on the task, I will opt for silence. To further explain white or pink noise use benefits in my case, they provide subtle stimulation and are minor distractions if I concentrate on them. However, the utility gained from masking environmental noise exceeds the utility loss in the rare moments that I shift focus to the white or pink noise, so I think it's a net positive for me.
- usrbinbash 5y agoWhite noise is fine and all, but nothing beats a good old 10h Server-Room Humming video.
- earedpiece 5y agoMakes sense, since Nikola Tesla said, "If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration". Probably sound vibrations, create an orchestra which is pleasant for the mind, althogh this is pure speculation. I would love top scientist to do more research in this area.
- executesorder66 5y agoI've always been confused by people that enjoy white noise. It's awful. Here is a sample from the wikipedia page on white noise : https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWhite-noise-sound-20sec-mono-44100Hz.ogg https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWhite... Does anyone genuinely enjoy listening to that? On the other hand, even though I don't, I could imagine why someone might like Brown noise (sounds almost like the ocean) : https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ABrownnoise.ogg https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ABrown...
- basq 5y agoWhen I code I use white noise, or pink noise, but it's run through a low pass filter to trim off the harsh high ends. I'll also add a slight comb filter then modulate the frequency with a slow LFO (around .05 hz) to give it some movement. Some extra processing then happens like a compressor to even it out a bit and add warmth. It's quite effective, especially for noisy environments.
- dbsmith83 5y agoDo you have a sample you could provide?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- userbinator 5y agoAt least for me, it's not listened to with the same volume you'd normally use for music or speech; white noise at that volume would definitely be awful. It's meant as barely perceptible background noise.
- naasking 5y ago"Like" is the wrong word. Silence is best, but if there are lots of auditory distractions in your environment then white noise drowns them out pretty well and just fades into a background hum for me.
- gremlinsinc 5y agoI prefer soft 8D audio for concentration/work-mode on alexa speaker. If I'm anxious - more upbeat sounds and pop/rock songs like Linkin Park or Imagine Dragons, w/ headphones. Closing your eyes is needed and just follow the music as it makes you feel a little dizzy. I never understood 'ASMR' until I found this music thing, really feels trippy. Helps a lot w/ my autism/ADHD.
- omnicognate 5y agoWhite noise is horrible to listen to. Brown noise is where it's at. Exponentially smoothed for the connoiseurs, get that soft rumble going. White noise is an equal mix of all frequencies. It's what you get from radio static. It's hissy and nasty. Brown noise is the sound of things being randomly bumped around (Brownian motion). It's what you get from waterfalls and thunder. It's smooth and delicious.
- Enginerrrd 5y agoI'm a fan of pink noise.
- xtiansimon 5y agoNot to be confused with the ‘brown note’. Uug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note
- lasagna_coder 5y agoHarsh Noise Wall is where it's at.
- AnonMessiah 5y agoMerzbow is my preferred "focus time" noise
- lasagna_coder 5y agoKudos, I take it you're focusing on your good taste in music.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoI like this site, that lets you tune it: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/greyNoiseGenerator.php https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/greyNoiseGenerator.php But yes, pink or brown noise is better than white.
- wenc 5y agoI play brown noise when I work. It really helps. I just go “Alexa play brown noise”. It helps my brain filter out noises. The only thing it doesn’t work for is barking dogs. For that I have to put on my headphones and play lofi on top of Alexa’s brown noise.
- westurner 5y agoWhite noise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_noise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_noise https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28402424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28402424 : > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_oscillation#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_oscillation#Overview says brainwaves are 1-150 Hz? IIRC compassion is acheivable on a bass guitar. Doodling improves memory retention / learning, too. IDK how much difference the content of a doodle makes? Hypothesis: Additional "cognitive landmarky" content in the doodle or received waveforms would increase retention up to a limit.
- izzygonzalez 5y agoRegarding doodling, it seems that any active productive study method is at least somewhat beneficial. I've found this in my own personal experiments. For example, testing myself with cloze deletions, creating Anki cards, generating mind maps, Cornell notes, inline annotation/marginalia, doodling, generating questions, generating mnemonics, mind palaces, etc. An interesting one is reading and reciting out loud: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2017.1383434 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2017.1... Another non-intuitive method that is helping me a lot is pacing around my house slowly while I read. It goes to show that cognition is an embodied phenomenon. It's unintuitive when intelligence is viewed from the traditional split mind/body paradigm but just take a look at an image of our nervous systems. Those wires to and from our brain and guts wrap around every part of us.
- westurner 5y agoMemory and retention in learning > Methods of improving memory and retention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_and_retention_in_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_and_retention_in_learni... Mnemosyne/Anki, (FreeMind, yEd, Gephi, AtomSpace as-moses, RDF bnodes, ONNX,) mind maps, RestructuredRext, MyST-Markdown, todo.txt (TaskWarrior,), StructuredProcrastination, ActivityWatch, Dogsheep, *-to-sqlite, awesome-quantified-self, https://github.com/woop/awesome-quantified-self https://github.com/woop/awesome-quantified-self But metrics for actual memory retention? I've heard of TinCan xAPI w/ a LRS. nbgrader, Khan Academy exercises, OpenBadges to demonstrate proficiency,
- abnry 5y agoAmusingly, I initially thought this was deep learning related, where if you augment your training set by adding white noise to each sample, then your trained NN will be more robust.
- xtiansimon 5y agoHow about some space noise? https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia07966.html https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia079...
- dbsmith83 5y agoThis is genuinely creepy sounding. It might be less creepy if they didn't compress the time so much
- wing-_-nuts 5y agoI use a non-looping white/brown noise machine to help me sleep at night and it works wonders in the city. One thing I've wondered is the health effects of listening to that noise at ~ 40db all night over all these years. OSHA says that anything under ~ 80db is safe for 8h, but I do wonder if there are any longer term impacts to hearing or audio processing for softer sounds played over a lifetime. I could easily see the brain adapting and 'ignoring' noise in that spectrum. For now, I simply consider the extra sleep I get to be worth the price.
- musicjohn 5y agoInteresting, could it be possible to elaborate which listening device you are using?
- jbkly7 5y agoNot OP but I use one called LectroFan. They also have a small travel-sized one that doubles as a bluetooth speaker. It has revolutionized my ability to sleep while traveling.
- wing-_-nuts 5y agoI have the same make. I really like the lower range noise for blocking out stuff. I didn't notice any sort of bluthooth speaker ability. I might have to RTFM. That'd be useful.
- jhoechtl 5y agoHeadline in 30 years: The long term effect of white noise caused a decline in IQ by 5%. We would do better not to manipulate our brain when we do not know the mechanics.
- fouc 5y agoFrom Norman Doidge's book "The Brain That Changes Itself", I learned that: Long term white noise exposure might be associated with hearing loss, especially age-related. The theory was that "nerves that fire together, wire together", too much white noise compared to clear sounds will cause the neural mapping for sounds to gradually become fuzzier, making distinctions between sounds will become harder.
- petra 5y ago"However, a recent study in the JAMA Journal of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery states that white noise’s lack of structure can worsen tinnitus symptoms. The study researchers also suggest that white noise could possibly “accelerate the ageing of the brain” and increase the risk for dementia" Study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaotolaryngology/article-abstract/2697852 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaotolaryngology/article-...
- SketchySeaBeast 5y agoHmmm, I wonder what implications that has for those of us who like to sleep with a fan.
- amelius 5y agoOr walking by the sea (though that's more akin to pink noise, I think)
- krackers 5y agoI'm skeptical about generalizing those results to more "natural" sounds like fan noise. As others have mentioned true white noise is very unnatural due to its uniform power spectrum. Pink and brown noise though seem more natural due to the dampening at higher frequencies, and I'd bet things like fan noise, rainfall, waterfall, etc. lie somewhere along the 1/f^alpha for alpha > 1 (in between pink and brown). I'm sure that we've evolved to handle things like noisy nights (thunder, rainfall) and living near rivers. You probably don't want to go beyond 50db though. But to be on the safe side I'm going to turn by fan one notch down (40db -> 30db) to be on the safe side.
- aedocw 5y agoOn a MacOS machine with Homebrew, run "brew install sox" and then use this to generate brown noise (or white or pink) play -n synth brownnoise gain -25
- sul_tasto 5y agocan anyone comment on binaural beats and the claim that they can be used to manipulate brain activity- such as promoting focus or relaxation?
- alar44 5y agoSure. Thinking that frequencies picked up by your ears has any sort of 1:1 correspondence or influence with the irrelevant overall firing frequency distribution of your brain is like thinking that adjusting the speed of your washing machine to an integer harmonic of 440hz helps keep your piano in tune.
- sn41 5y agoThis is the old scientific American article (from 1973) from where a lot of the claims originate, to my knowledge: Gerald Oster, "Auditory beats in the brain", Scientific American, 229 (4): pages 94-102, October 1973. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/auditory-beats-in-the-brain/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/auditory-beats-in... From what I understand, later controlled studies do not seem to back the claim that specific frequency differences lead the brain to an alpha state, or theta state etc. as claimed. But there may be potential in reducing anxiety: R Padmanabhan 1, A J Hildreth, D Laws. "A prospective, randomised, controlled study examining binaural beat audio and pre-operative anxiety in patients undergoing general anaesthesia for day case surgery", Anaesthesia, 2005. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16115248/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16115248/