Listening to Birds Reduces Anxiety and Paranoia: Study

Listening to birdsong can help to reduce anxiety and paranoia in healthy participants, a study has found.

A German team of researchers investigated the effect of urban traffic noise versus natural birdsongs on the mood and cognitive performance of participants.

The study, which was published in the Nature Portfolio journal Scientific Reports, found evidence for the beneficial effects of birdsongs on mood and paranoid symptoms—the latter being demonstrated experimentally for the first time.

The environment humans are living in is changing drastically as the world rapidly urbanizes. It has been estimated that, by 2050, almost 70 percent of the global population will be living in cities, with some regions such as Europe having already surpassed this mark.

Given that urbanization has been linked to worse mental-health outcomes, understanding how the urban environment affects our well-being is an important endeavour.

However, the impact of environmental influences on our well-being and cognition has often been neglected in traditional psychological research.

"My colleagues and I are generally fascinated by the impact of the environment on humans, and by our research also want to raise the awareness about the interdependence between humans and nature," Emil Stobbe, an author of the study with the Lise Meitner Group, told Newsweek.

"In the field of environmental neurosciences, we aim at studying the healing impacts of natural environments," said Stobbe.

"Studying the impacts of man-made environments is also part of our group's research field. Within the scope of the present study, we wanted to investigate the potential psychological impact of man-made versus natural soundscapes, which we are all constantly exposed to in everyday life."

The German researchers are affiliated with the Lise Meitner Group for Environmental Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, and the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.

Prior research has shown that spending time in natural environments may help reduce symptoms of stress or anxiety and provide general benefits for well-being.

"Previous studies had shown that natural—especially birdsongs, but also water and wind—as opposed to human-made sound, is related to more favorable mental-health outcomes," Stobbe said. "We reasoned that studying such soundscapes could be a promising avenue to influence mental states."

In a randomized, online experiment, the researchers exposed almost 300 healthy participants to audio recordings of one out of four conditions for six minutes: low-diversity traffic noise, high-diversity traffic noise, low-diversity birdsong soundscapes, and high-diversity birdsong soundscapes.

Before and after exposure to the sounds, the participants performed a task to assess cognition and also filled out depression, anxiety and paranoia questionnaires.

The study showed that brief exposure to birdsongs reduced anxious and paranoid states in healthy subjects, independent of whether the birdsong came from two different or more different bird species—i.e. low- versus high-diversity conditions.

Meanwhile, brief exposure to traffic noise generally worsened depressive states, particularly if the audio clip involved many different sources of traffic sounds.

In this experiment, neither birdsong nor traffic noise had a demonstrable impact on cognitive performance, namely, working memory.

According to Stobbe, the results of the study have several implications for our understanding of how the environment influences our well-being.

"The presence of birdsong may be a subtle indication of an intact natural environment signalling a vital, biologically valuable and threat-free safe space for humans," he said. "This may explain the beneficial effects of reduced anxiety and paranoia.

"An alternative explanation is that humans may generally associate positive experiences with natural sounds, like birdsongs, which, when the sound is heard, activates these memories and relieves stress."

It is also known that people who report higher connectedness with nature can benefit more strongly from the healing impacts known to be provided by natural environments.

This highlights the importance of early, positive contact with, education of, and access to, nature, according to Stobbe.

"Birdsong or other natural soundscapes could be further studied in stressful settings, such as waiting or other rooms in psychiatric or emergency settings," Stobbe said. "Individuals who are anxious or paranoid could listen to birds in their environment or as audio recordings to reduce distress.

"Going for a walk in nature to consciously listen to birds sing in reality could even have a stronger impact based on the reasons mentioned above with respect to experience connectedness to nature.

"In another study from our lab at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, our colleague Sonja Sudimac could show that a one-hour walk in nature reduces brain activity associated with stress, showing another facet of why interactions with natural stimuli such as birds or forests are beneficial for our mental health," said Stobbe.

The authors note that the study contained limitations; for example, the sample contained a higher percentage of males to females.

Also, the study did not show the effects of repeated exposure to these kinds of noises. Only healthy participants were used, and people with high paranoia levels, for instance, were not assessed.

As a result, more research will be required on this topic.