In yesterday’s Los Angeles Times first page, there was an article by Doug Smith titled “Fixes to cut LAX noise skip poor”. The discussion was about how millions of dollars have been spent on reducing the impact of airplane noise in communities in the flight path to Los Angeles Airport. However, reportedly not much of the money has been spent on some of the poorer communities for reasons discussed in the article. That got me thinking about the effects of noise or silence on our brains and those of our children.
There is a scientific literature studying the effects of noise pollution on cognitive performance. It has been found that noise is detrimental to performance at work and school. Noise also has an effect on decreasing motivation and increasing errors. The cognitive functions most affected by noise have been shown to be attention, memory, and problem solving. Even worse, studies also have shown that children exposed to homes or classrooms near airplane flight paths, railways or highways have lower reading scores and are slowed in the development of cognitive and language skills.
So is there any hope for us in a noisy world? Yes, there is more than you might think. In a recent article, author Rebecca Beris wrote how “Science Says Silence is much more important to our brains than we think” (https://www.lifehack.org/377243/science-says-silence-much-more-important-our-brains-than-thought ). There appear four ways in which silence benefits our brains:
Silence may help regenerate brain cells. In studies with mice in 2011 in the journal Brain, Structure and Function, the authors were studying different types of noise and silence. While silence was considered a control condition, it turned out that when mice were exposed to two hours of silence per day they developed new cells in the hippocampus. This is the area of the brain having much to do with memory and learning. So you say these are mice and I can’t spend two hours per day in silence. Alright, it will get even better.
The brain internalizes and evaluates information during silence. Several years ago, in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, author Joseph Moran noted that even when the brain is resting, it integrates internal and external information. It helps you think in imaginative and novel ways.
Silence relieves stress and tension. Studies have shown that noise has an effect on our brain of increasing the levels of stress hormones. It is thought that the amygdala, an area associated with emotion and memory formation, is activated during noisy periods and releases stress hormones. If you live in a noisy environment, you likely will experience chronic stress activation. In fact, children exposed to chronic levels of noise develop a stress response that helps them to ignore the noise. However, what is of concern is that the children not only ignore noise but also things to which they should be paying attention, such as speech. Silence has an opposite effect. It releases tension in the brain. Here’s the good part. In a study in the journal Heart (Larsen and Galletly, Heart, 2006, April 92{4}, 433-434). it was noted that two minutes of silence can be even more relaxing than listening to so-called “relaxing” music. This was based on changes observed in blood pressure and blood circulation in the brain. Now I think we all can carve out two minutes of silence per day.
Silence replenishes your cognitive resources. When you are in a place of lower sensory input (noise) your brain can recover some of the cognitive functions mentioned earlier such as attention, memory, and problem solving.
So silence is a safe, low cost, and effective way to enhance our brain function as well as relieve stress and tension. Since most of us live in a very noisy world, consider the benefits of silence for you and your children. Just two minutes can help. If you want more information about stress management, please acquire our book (I Can’t Take It Anymore; How to Manage Stress so It Doesn’t Manage You; Paul G. Longobardi, Ph.D., and Janice B. Longobardi, R.N., B.S.N., P.H.N.), available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1542458056. For more information about the book, authors, and stress, please see our website at www.manageyourhealthandstress.com.
Best of luck on your journey.
Dr. Paul Longobardi
For information on these and related topics, please visit my website at www.successandmindset.com