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.
"However, a recent study in the JAMA Journal of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery states that white noise’s lack of structure can worsen tinnitus symptoms. The study researchers also suggest that white noise could possibly “accelerate the ageing of the brain” and increase the risk for dementia"
Anecdotal, but white noise sends my tinnitus wild. If the white noise is loud enough, you won't necessarily hear the change until it's turned off, but after that my ears are positively screaming.
Same is true of other kinds of background noise, such as computer fans, air conditioners or driving in a car. A while ago, based on some self study, I tried to 'fix' my tinnitus by targeting it with specific frequencies rather than noise, and that provided temporary relief by actually reducing the perception of the tinnitus briefly (like 5 minutes). But white noise has always increased it.
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 that we've evolved to handle things like noisy nights (thunder, rainfall) and living near rivers. You probably don't want to go beyond 50db though.
But to be on the safe side I'm going to turn by fan one notch down (40db -> 30db) to be on the safe side.
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.
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'm barely paying attention too. Especially for music, if I notice the volume decreasing, I can turn it up, and if I don't notice, then just let a fade to nothing since I'm not paying attention apparently.
Must every article on HN about some positive discovery around noise, hearing, and tinnitus always be followed with a top comment about how everything we think about these things is wrong, and everything we’re doing is damaging our hearing and/or making our tinnitus worse?
I’ve been sleeping with Marpac sound machines for years, partly due to tinnitus but also partly just to help with sleep, only to find out it’s probably damaging my hearing and/or making my tinnitus worse.
Can someone please post some positive news about hearing/tinnitus?
This is seriously the second link in like 3 days.
Maybe I should just never click any HN article hearing related.
It can take a long time for conflicting theories to resolve in neuroscience. For example, the existence of adult neurogenesis in humans is still hotly debated despite at least a decade or two of papers on both sides. Meanwhile, it has already been accepted as a fact by the news media, and has begun to appear in self help books as evidence of the ability to 're-wire the brain'.
So, enjoy your sound machine. I'm sure bad sleep is probably implicated in hearing loss, too. Or at least it will be once the right grad student reads this comment.
"nerves that fire together, wire together" - ha, that's quite a profound statement. I've been thinking recently how we manage to hear harmonics as one sound without preexisting algorithms in our brain to detect them, and this is probably the answer. Edit. This also means we hear sounds differently. Someone who listens much to classical music hears harmonics really well, but someone who listens to sounds with different aharmonic structure, will learn to hear those aharmonic patterns as highly musical.
So there are 16,000 neurons in the ear that perform something like FFT with 16k bins over a 100ms sliding time frame. Now imagine there is a 2nd layer where each neuron is watching the corresponding neuron in the 1st layer and when that one fires, it looks up what other neurons are firing at the same time. This correlation event is recorded somewhere inside the neuron. After listening to lots of sounds, the 2nd layer neuron will notice a simple pattern: when its frequency fires, neurons corresponding to 2x, 3x, etc. frequencies also fire. As a result, the 2nd layer neuron fires upon seeing a harmonic pattern.
Why does someone that listens to classical hear harmonics (I'm still not sure whether you mean tonal harmonies or harmonics aka timbre) better than someone who doesn't?
Sure, maybe they'd be better at picking out a bassoon in the mix than a metal fan, and a metal fan might be able to tell the difference between a Jackson guitar and a ESP guitar than the classical fan, but that's just due to familiarity, not their overall sense of hearing.
I don't think any serious musician would agree with you whether you're talking harmony or harmonics. However, listening to music in general will definitely allow you to hear different harmonic intervals better than if you didn't, but this is again just due to familiarity/ear training and doesn't overlap into your overall ability to hear.
We just use mnemonics. For example, Amen = 4th twinkle twinkle = 5th NBC = 6th etc.
Hearing is a process that extends from your ear all the way through your brain. The hard line you think exists between “hear” and “familiarity” or “ear training” doesn’t exist. The last few years I’ve been spending around Vietnamese, and while I still speak relatively little of it, I’ve been able to slowly adjust to be able to separate out sounds and words that previously sounded like one big mess.
And that's something completely different. Language and music use similar parts of the brain, but you're just mashing audio perception together in a way that just isn't related and is not what the article is talking about.
You’re being overly strict in defining a general word, in a way that worsens understanding.
We aren’t computers with parts. There isn’t a microphone connected to a DSP, there’s a neural net on every level from signal processing up to whole experience.
When someone says “hear” they mean almost all of that pipeline, not just the mic quality.
Picking out a bassoon in the mix is hearing better, at the level that matters.
White noise is insidious. There was this one team that sat in an area with lots of white noise. They seemed to like it - said it helped them focus. Now they all have hearing deficits.
Not necessarily a fan of white noise but I’d take white noise over unsubstantiated claims from a Popsci book any day. Those things are chokefull of un reveiwed conjecture that has no place in a book or anywhere else except the authors brain where all they should be is hypotheses.
Comments
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.
"However, a recent study in the JAMA Journal of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery states that white noise’s lack of structure can worsen tinnitus symptoms. The study researchers also suggest that white noise could possibly “accelerate the ageing of the brain” and increase the risk for dementia"
Study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaotolaryngology/article-...
Anecdotal, but white noise sends my tinnitus wild. If the white noise is loud enough, you won't necessarily hear the change until it's turned off, but after that my ears are positively screaming.
Same is true of other kinds of background noise, such as computer fans, air conditioners or driving in a car. A while ago, based on some self study, I tried to 'fix' my tinnitus by targeting it with specific frequencies rather than noise, and that provided temporary relief by actually reducing the perception of the tinnitus briefly (like 5 minutes). But white noise has always increased it.
Hmmm, I wonder what implications that has for those of us who like to sleep with a fan.
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 that we've evolved to handle things like noisy nights (thunder, rainfall) and living near rivers. You probably don't want to go beyond 50db though.
But to be on the safe side I'm going to turn by fan one notch down (40db -> 30db) to be on the safe side.
Ya, I would think there would have been some correlations drawn by now between hearing loss and living by the ocean or something.
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.
Or walking by the sea (though that's more akin to pink noise, I think)
Interesting given the studies that show noise pollution from roads etc lead to similar conclusions[1], even when taking air pollution into account.
Similar effect at hand?
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/09/transport-no...
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'm barely paying attention too. Especially for music, if I notice the volume decreasing, I can turn it up, and if I don't notice, then just let a fade to nothing since I'm not paying attention apparently.
I found myself particularly fond of this idea after reading your comment. Buttons840 I like that idea, you have my vote.
Must every article on HN about some positive discovery around noise, hearing, and tinnitus always be followed with a top comment about how everything we think about these things is wrong, and everything we’re doing is damaging our hearing and/or making our tinnitus worse?
I’ve been sleeping with Marpac sound machines for years, partly due to tinnitus but also partly just to help with sleep, only to find out it’s probably damaging my hearing and/or making my tinnitus worse.
Can someone please post some positive news about hearing/tinnitus?
This is seriously the second link in like 3 days.
Maybe I should just never click any HN article hearing related.
It can take a long time for conflicting theories to resolve in neuroscience. For example, the existence of adult neurogenesis in humans is still hotly debated despite at least a decade or two of papers on both sides. Meanwhile, it has already been accepted as a fact by the news media, and has begun to appear in self help books as evidence of the ability to 're-wire the brain'.
So, enjoy your sound machine. I'm sure bad sleep is probably implicated in hearing loss, too. Or at least it will be once the right grad student reads this comment.
"nerves that fire together, wire together" - ha, that's quite a profound statement. I've been thinking recently how we manage to hear harmonics as one sound without preexisting algorithms in our brain to detect them, and this is probably the answer. Edit. This also means we hear sounds differently. Someone who listens much to classical music hears harmonics really well, but someone who listens to sounds with different aharmonic structure, will learn to hear those aharmonic patterns as highly musical.
Harmonics or harmonies? Your edit is nonsense either way.
So there are 16,000 neurons in the ear that perform something like FFT with 16k bins over a 100ms sliding time frame. Now imagine there is a 2nd layer where each neuron is watching the corresponding neuron in the 1st layer and when that one fires, it looks up what other neurons are firing at the same time. This correlation event is recorded somewhere inside the neuron. After listening to lots of sounds, the 2nd layer neuron will notice a simple pattern: when its frequency fires, neurons corresponding to 2x, 3x, etc. frequencies also fire. As a result, the 2nd layer neuron fires upon seeing a harmonic pattern.
I wouldn't be so quick to call nonsense. Spending time listening to certain things most definitely affects your ability to pick out specific details.
All heavy metal music sounds about the same to me. But I'm sure that is not the case for fans of heavy metal.
Why does someone that listens to classical hear harmonics (I'm still not sure whether you mean tonal harmonies or harmonics aka timbre) better than someone who doesn't?
Sure, maybe they'd be better at picking out a bassoon in the mix than a metal fan, and a metal fan might be able to tell the difference between a Jackson guitar and a ESP guitar than the classical fan, but that's just due to familiarity, not their overall sense of hearing.
I don't think any serious musician would agree with you whether you're talking harmony or harmonics. However, listening to music in general will definitely allow you to hear different harmonic intervals better than if you didn't, but this is again just due to familiarity/ear training and doesn't overlap into your overall ability to hear.
We just use mnemonics. For example, Amen = 4th twinkle twinkle = 5th NBC = 6th etc.
Hearing is a process that extends from your ear all the way through your brain. The hard line you think exists between “hear” and “familiarity” or “ear training” doesn’t exist. The last few years I’ve been spending around Vietnamese, and while I still speak relatively little of it, I’ve been able to slowly adjust to be able to separate out sounds and words that previously sounded like one big mess.
And that's something completely different. Language and music use similar parts of the brain, but you're just mashing audio perception together in a way that just isn't related and is not what the article is talking about.
You’re being overly strict in defining a general word, in a way that worsens understanding.
We aren’t computers with parts. There isn’t a microphone connected to a DSP, there’s a neural net on every level from signal processing up to whole experience.
When someone says “hear” they mean almost all of that pipeline, not just the mic quality.
Picking out a bassoon in the mix is hearing better, at the level that matters.
White noise is insidious. There was this one team that sat in an area with lots of white noise. They seemed to like it - said it helped them focus. Now they all have hearing deficits.
Not necessarily a fan of white noise but I’d take white noise over unsubstantiated claims from a Popsci book any day. Those things are chokefull of un reveiwed conjecture that has no place in a book or anywhere else except the authors brain where all they should be is hypotheses.