"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.
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.
He'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.
I 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.
I 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.
Possibly 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.
I 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.
The lofi hiphop (aka lofi girl) radio station on YouTube is another example of non-distracting music. It's there, but not something that draws attention.
Same with me, the music I normally like distracts me while I work. To fix it I open up a youtube tab with a "cafe sounds" loop running (while also playing my music). Then it sounds like there's some nice music playing somewhere in the distance but I can't make it out. I also open up a "train sound" loop, which really dials in my focus.
It's a bit of a cacophony, but it got me through grad school!
There 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 or on YouTube or Spotify.
Noise 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.
There 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.
When 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.
At 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.
"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.
The issue that I suffer from is that there is no such thing as silence. Even the sound of my breathing can be triggering, and the quietest of quiet keyboards will still set me off.
I'd take white noise over distracting background noises (i.e., roommates, coffee shops) in a heartbeat. The point isn't to enjoy the sound per se, it's to block distractions.
But yes, I do prefer brown noise over white noise by a wide margin.
But then why choose such a horrible sound to drown out the background? Why not something easier on the ear? Personally I find the noise so jarring and intolerable I'd be more distracted by it (even on a low volume) than whatever irritating noises I'm hearing in the background.
Well that's your feeling and that's fine. But I'm okay with both white and brown noise, don't feel it's jarring. In fact, any other kind if noise distracts me
I 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.
White 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.
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.
Regarding 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.
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.
Awesome. Thanks for the resources. Coincidentally, I stumbled on this research today on the effect of exercise + meditation on word recall: https://hpp.tbzmed.ac.ir/PDF/hpp-9-314.pdf
" IDK how much difference the content of a doodle makes?"
I'm a doodler. I also make art. And you are right, the cognitive load of the doodle makes a difference. My 'learning doodles' are really a mindless endeavor, and they only realistically look arty because I have been making art for decades now. The actual content of the doodle matters little. The real point is more keeping the hands busy and the mind lightly engaged with something else - I suppose it is akin to listening to a podcast while walking or driving.
I can get something similar from taking notes, but even that is better if I have doodle space since I don't need to write everything down.
Amusingly, 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.
I 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 ;)
This 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.
Most 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.
It'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).
It'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.
> A human mind on the verge of sleep is an insanely powerful signal processing device and recogniser/producer/completer of patterns.
This resonates with my feelings. Hardware pseudo random noise is something i'd like to try, but I'm not sure my partner is so keen on it, how to deliver the sound in a discrete and non-intrusive way?
Most of these that I've encountered are webapps and they loop/crossfade a white noise sample rather than synthesize it. I don't think looping is the issue here though. I get the same voice-like auditory hallucinations even when playing with an analog white noise source in my analog synthesizers. A static square wave without any other sounds also causes them for me.
I 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.
Not 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.
I 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.
105 comments
[ 51.4 ms ] story [ 335 ms ] threadImportant highlight is that primary task (of remembering images) did not use (or need to use) auditory sense.
Could white noise also help with addiction?
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.
https://youtu.be/Ze2pc6NwsHQ?t=3350
Interesting podcast, btw. got it from HN few days ago.
For me personally, white-ish noise has always been a calming factor, which allows me to relax and thus concentrate, if I need to.
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
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.
It's a bit of a cacophony, but it got me through grad school!
Space music (a sub genre) is my favourite.
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.
Here is a sample from the wikipedia page on white noise :
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%3ABrown...
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.
But yes, I do prefer brown noise over white noise by a wide margin.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note
https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/greyNoiseGenerator.php
But yes, pink or brown noise is better than white.
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28402424 :
> 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.
An interesting one is reading and reciting out loud: 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.
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
But metrics for actual memory retention? I've heard of TinCan xAPI w/ a LRS. nbgrader, Khan Academy exercises, OpenBadges to demonstrate proficiency,
From "How Our Environment Affects What We Remember" https://neurosciencenews.com/environment-memory-20165/amp/
I'm a doodler. I also make art. And you are right, the cognitive load of the doodle makes a difference. My 'learning doodles' are really a mindless endeavor, and they only realistically look arty because I have been making art for decades now. The actual content of the doodle matters little. The real point is more keeping the hands busy and the mind lightly engaged with something else - I suppose it is akin to listening to a podcast while walking or driving.
I can get something similar from taking notes, but even that is better if I have doodle space since I don't need to write everything down.
Also it's usually a good idea to buy a little machine for this that uses like 5W vs running your computer all night.
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.
This resonates with my feelings. Hardware pseudo random noise is something i'd like to try, but I'm not sure my partner is so keen on it, how to deliver the sound in a discrete and non-intrusive way?
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.
I've tried white noise and can, like others, attest that brown or pink are better.
We would do better not to manipulate our brain when we do not know the mechanics.