Listening to birdsong is good for mental health

In the study, researchers studied how traffic noise and birdsong affect mood, paranoia and cognitive function
by conducting a randomized online experiment with 295 participants.
These people listened to typical traffic noises or bird calls for 6 minutes, different numbers of different traffic sounds or bird calls
.
Before and after listening to the recordings, participants filled out questionnaires assessing their mental health and underwent cognitive tests
.
"Everyone has a certain psychological predisposition
.
Healthy people also experience anxious thoughts or temporary feelings
of paranoia.
These questionnaires allowed us to identify people's tendencies without being diagnosed with depression, anxiety and paranoia, and to investigate the influence of bird or traffic sounds on these tendencies," said first author Emil Stobbe, a predoctoral researcher
in environmental neuroscience in the Lise Meitner group at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

Current research suggests that listening to birdsong can reduce anxiety and paranoia
in healthy participants.
In this experiment, bird calls did not appear to have an effect
on depressive states.
However, traffic noise often exacerbates depressive states, especially when
audio clips contain multiple different traffic sounds.
The positive effects of birdsong on mood are already known, but to the authors' knowledge, this study reveals for the first time the effects of
birdsong on paranoid states.
This has nothing to do with
whether the birdsong comes from two or more different birds.
The researchers also found that neither bird song nor traffic noise affected cognitive performance
.

In the researchers' view, the explanation for these effects is that birdsong is a subtle cue of an intact natural environment that distracts people from stressors that might otherwise be a sign
of a serious threat.
Taken together, these results provide interesting avenues for further research and applications, such as actively manipulating background noise in different situations, or examining its effects
on patients diagnosed with anxiety disorders or paranoia.

Birdsand can also be used to prevent mental disorders
.
Listening to CDs is a simple and easy intervention
.
But if we can already show this effect in online experiments conducted by participants on computers, we can assume that in the outdoors of nature, the effect is even stronger," Stobbe said
.
He is a member of the Lise Meitner Environmental Neuroscience Group at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, which studies the impact of
the physical environment on individuals.
"A recent study we conducted showed that an hour-long walk in nature can reduce stress-related brain activity," adds
Simone Kühn, head of the research team.
We can't yet say which features of nature — smells, sounds, colors, or combinations of them — are responsible for
this effect.
The current study provides a further basis for clarifying this issue," Kühn continues
.
To be sure, nature improves mental health and well-being
.
So, let's go!