Neuroscience Reveals the
Nourishing Benefits That Silence Has on Your Brain
Here's what happens to
your brain when it's surrounded by the noise of nothingness.
When's the last time you
sat in total, utter silence?
While it's not easy to
find true peace and quiet, there's now evidence you may want to find more
opportunities to embrace noiselessness throughout
your day.
We already know too much
noise is not a good thing for our brains or our bodies.
Research has linked noise
pollution to increased blood pressure, sleep loss, and heart disease.
These results have led to
even more research on the long-term effects of noise. Along the way, almost by
accident, scientists who study noise are uncovering benefits of its absence.
A recent piece in Nautilus explores in detail the positive effects that
silence can have on our brains.
Journalist Daniel A. Gross
elaborates on several studies in which researchers set out to study the effects
of various types of noise--such as music, short bursts of sound, and white
noise--only to discover the silence in between the sounds they were studying
produced interesting results. Here are a few gems this body of research has
revealed.
Growth of new brain cells
In exposing groups of mice
to a selection of sounds, Duke University regenerative biologist Imke Kirste
was trying to see which one might spark the creation of new brain cells.
She used silence as her
control.
She found that two hours
of silence a day produced new cell creation in the hippocampus, the main part
of the brain associated with memory.
In reviewing the results,
Kirste concluded that silence could have been such a strange departure from the
norm that it heightened the mice's alertness.
"We saw that silence
is really helping the new generated cells to differentiate into
neurons and integrate into the system," Kirste said.
Activation of your
brain's memory
Even when the world around
us is completely quiet, our brains are extremely adequate at filling in the
silence.
Take the example of
listening to your favorite song, when it suddenly cuts out halfway through. If
you know the song well, you'll continue to hear it play in your head.
By retrieving the memory
of the song's music and lyrics, your brain is creating an illusion of sound.
The Nautilus piece
explains that this is because your brain's auditory cortex remains hard at
work. Even if your ears are not being stimulated by external sounds, your brain
always finds a way to muscle its way into staying active.
Encouragement
of self-reflection
Without stimulation and distraction,
your brain need not focus and goes into a default mode of sorts.
That doesn't mean it
completely turns off. Quite the opposite.
Your brain at rest will
sort and gather information. This is where the self-reflection comes in.
Auditory stimulation
forces your brain to process sound and listen to what's going on around you.
Without that external
noise, your brain is forced to listen to what's going on inside of it.
Source: Inc
Comments
Post a Comment