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White noise improves learning by modulating activity in midbrain regions (2014)

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: White noise improves learning by modulating activity in midbrain regions (2014)

#101
post #51

From Norman Doidge's book "The Brain That Changes Itself", I learned that: Long term white noise exposure might be associated with hearing loss, especially age-related. The theory was that "nerves that fire together, wire together", too much white noise compared to clear sounds will cause the neural mapping for sounds to gradually become fuzzier, making distinctions between sounds will become harder.

On the subject of hearing loss, can I plug my idea again that all devices should have a "constantly gradually decrease volume" option? It's way to easy to turn up a device for a temporary reason and then an hour later you realize the sound has been way too loud for a long time. I would rather push a button to turn up the volume twice an hour than realize I've been damaging my hearing for the last hour for something I…

I found myself particularly fond of this idea after reading your comment. Buttons840 I like that idea, you have my vote.

Re: White noise improves learning by modulating activity in midbrain regions (2014)

#102
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, could it be possible to elaborate which listening device you are using?

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.

Re: White noise improves learning by modulating activity in midbrain regions (2014)

#103
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical about generalizing those results to more "natural" sounds like fan noise. As others have mentioned true white noise is very unnatural due to its uniform power spectrum. Pink and brown noise though seem more natural due to the dampening at higher frequencies, and I'd bet things like fan noise, rainfall, waterfall, etc. lie somewhere along the 1/f^alpha for alpha > 1 (in between pink and brown). I'm sure…

Nature sounds like rainfall & ocean waves vary a lot I imagine, with lots of breaks and pauses, the lack of a continuous sound probably helps. A fan that's rotating back and forth might produce neurologically better sounds, as the breeze bounces off different parts of the room than one that is fixed in one direction?

Actually hm I just tried a hearing test at https://hearingtest.online (very well done site, read the sidebar notes) and I seem to have a characteristic 4khz dip. I don't listen to music with headphones and have never gone to concerts, perhaps the years of fan noise at night did indeed contribute to this.

Re: White noise improves learning by modulating activity in midbrain regions (2014)

#104

White noise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_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 re…

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. An interesting one is reading and reciting out loud: https:…

Memory and retention in learning > Methods of improving memory and retention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_and_retention_in_learni...

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,

Re: White noise improves learning by modulating activity in midbrain regions (2014)

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. An interesting one is reading and reciting out loud: https:…

Memory and retention in learning > Methods of improving memory and retention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_and_retention_in_learni... 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…

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

Re: White noise improves learning by modulating activity in midbrain regions (2014)

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memory and retention in learning > Methods of improving memory and retention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_and_retention_in_learni... 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…

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

"Episodic memory enhancement versus impairment is determined by contextual similarity across events" (2021) https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2101509118

From "How Our Environment Affects What We Remember" https://neurosciencenews.com/environment-memory-20165/amp/

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