Researchers recently discovered that listening to a birdsong can reduce paranoia and anxiety in healthy individuals.
Newsweek reported that the research team examined the impact of urban traffic noise "versus natural birdsongs on the participants' mood and cognitive performance.
The study showed evidence of birdsongs' beneficial impacts on paranoid and mood symptoms, the former being experimentally demonstrated for the first time.
The environment humans live in is changing drastically as the world quickly urbanizes. By 2050, nearly 70 percent of the population will live in cities, with some regions like Europe having already surpassed the mark.
Link to Mental Health Outcomes
As specified in the study published in the Scientific Reports journal, given that urbanization has been associated with worse mental health outcomes, understanding how the urban environment affects humans' well-being is an essential endeavor.
Nonetheless, the effect of environmental influences on one's well-being and cognition has frequently been neglected in traditional psychological studies.
According to an author of the study Emil Stobbe, with the Lise Miether Group, he and his colleagues are fascinated in general by the effect of the environment on humans, and through their study, they also want to raise awareness of the interdependence between humans and nature.
In the field of environmental neurosciences, she explained, they aim to investigate the effects of natural environments.
Study Participants Exposed to Audio Recordings
In a randomized, online study, the researchers exposed nearly 300 healthy participants to audio recordings of one of the four conditions for six minutes. Such recordings comprise low-diversity traffic noise, high-diversity traffic noise, high-diversity birdsong soundscapes, and low-diversity birdsong soundscapes.
Before and following exposure to sounds, the study participants performed a task to analyze cognition and filled out depression, anxiety, and paranoia questionnaires.
As a result, neither traffic noise nor birdsong had a demonstrable effect on cognitive performance, also known as working memory.
'Natural Soundscapes'
A similar Health Asia Daily News report specified that according to Stobbe, the presence of birdsong might be a subtle specification of an intact natural environment signaling an important, biologically valuable, and threat-free safe space for humans. This may explain the advantageous impacts of reduced paranoia and anxiety.
He also said that birds or other natural soundscapes could be further examined in stressful backgrounds, like waiting or other rooms in psychiatric or emergency backgrounds.
People who are paranoid or anxious could listen to birds in their environment or as audio recordings to lessen distress.
Essentially, going for a walk in nature to consciously listen to birds sing in reality could even have a stronger effect according to the above reasons, the respect to experience link to nature.
Effect on People with High Levels of Paranoia
In another research from a lab at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Stobbe said their colleague Sonja Sudimac could show that a one-hour walk in nature lessens brain activity linked to stress from the lab at Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Sonja Sudimac could demonstrate that a one-hour walk in nature is reducing brain activity linked to stress, showing another facet of the reason interactions with natural stimuli like birds or forests are advantageous for one's mental health.
The study investigators noted that the study contained limitations. For instance, the sample contained a higher percentage of males than females.
Lastly, the study also did not exhibit the impacts of repeated kinds of noises. Only healthy individuals were used, and people with high levels of paranoia, for example, were analyzed. Consequently, more research will be needed on this particular topic.
Related information about birdsong as a stress reliever is shown on Open Heart Music's YouTube video below:
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