The Therapeutic Effects of Birdsongs and Traffic Noise: A Study on Mood and Cognitive Performance

A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf conducted a study on the effect of traffic noise and birdsong on the mood and cognitive performance of humans, as well as on paranoid patients.

The study participants were asked to listen for six minutes to different sounds, such as regular traffic or birdsong

Before and after listening to the audio samples, the participants filled out questionnaires about their mental health and were assigned cognitive tasks.

To do this study, the researchers conducted a randomized online trial with about 300 male and female participants.

They published the results of this study in the scientific journal Scientific Reports.

The first supervisor of the study, doctoral student Emil Staube, in the “Les Maitens” group for environmental neurosciences, explained that every human being has certain mental tendencies and that even

Healthy people can have anxious thoughts or sometimes pathological fears. He added that questionnaires usually allow identifying tendencies towards depression and anxiety disorders.

And paranoia among the participants, and examined the effect of birdsong or traffic noise on these tendencies.

The results of the current study indicate that listening to birdsong reduces symptoms of anxiety and paranoia in healthy people. However, this study revealed that this

Sounds have no effect on depression.

Traffic noise has exacerbated cases of depression in general, while the positive effect of birdsong and sparrows on mood is known before.

Researchers see a possible explanation for the positive effects of bird song in the fact that it is subconsciously associated with a healthy natural environment.

This distracts attention from psychological pressure and creates a feeling of security and reassurance in the person.

Finally, we point out that these results provide an extremely important basis for further research and studies on the effect of birdsong on other psychological and mental illnesses.

If researchers were indeed able to detect such positive effects through an online experiment, it can be said that the effect in nature would inevitably be stronger.

2023-10-17 14:14:36

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