The Science of Opera
Interested in opera and in neuroscience? You’ll be fascinated by this article merging the two: Frank Rose’s “Music, Science and Healing Intersect in an A.I. Opera” (The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/arts/music/artificial-intelligence-opera.html). A taste: “’We’ve...
Thinking while Standing
Bhat and associates report that “The present study investigated the effects of attending lectures in sitting and standing postures on executive function of young adults. . . . Attending a lecture in a standing...
Seeing, Hearing birds
Hammond and team studied implications of seeing or hearing birds. They “used the Urban Mind smartphone application to examine the impact of seeing or hearing birds on self-reported mental wellbeing in real-life contexts. A sample...
How much are views worth?
Crompton and Nicholls report that “Twenty-seven empirical studies were identified that empirically estimated the impact on property values of views of open space. The review differentiated between street level and high-rise building views. Among...
Designing for Sleeping zzzzzz
Several issues ago we wrote about how design can make it easier for people to fall asleep and stay asleep (here), and designing for sleeping has been in the news recently. Would you go...
Environmental Psych in the News – Brown noise….?!
Dani Blum (2022, “Can Brown Noise Turn Off Your Brain?, The New York Times,https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/23/well/mind/brown-noise.html) effectively presents much of the science that underpins Space Doctors discussions of science-based soundscaping, as discussed in this article (also...
Sound Effects on Sights
Sounds have such a profound effect on us. Williams and teammates share that “Visual object recognition is not performed in isolation but depends on prior knowledge and context. Here, we found that auditory context...
Hygge please
The Scandinavians have been doing it for aeons – they hygge (different languages use different terms but “hygge” is the one that English speakers are most familiar with). Hygge makes a space cosy and...
We like REAL music…
Shank and report that “participants listened to excerpts of electronic and classical music and rated how much they liked the excerpts. . . . Participants . . . liked music less that they thought...
Sensory interconnectivity
Sathian and Lacey determined that “The sensory systems responsible for touch, vision, and hearing have traditionally been regarded as mostly separate. Contrary to this dogma, recent work has shown that interactions between the senses...
Building in familiarity
Humans usually like to be in places that seem familiar to them—but familiar does not mean exactly the same as spaces previously encountered, just consistent with those other places in important ways, areas where...
The Most Common and Important Errors Design Professionals Seem to Make
None of us are perfect, even people who design for a living. Unfortunately, design professionals regularly do the following things, which are oh so very un-good for the people using what they’ve designed: Signalling...
Natural environments and positive effects
Koivisto and colleagues share that “Exposure to natural environments has positive psychological effects. These effects have been explained from an evolutionary perspective, emphasizing humans’ innate preference for natural stimuli. . . . The source...
Nature Soundscapes help us focus and more…
In a recent study “EEG and Heart Rate data were recorded from 10 participants within an [real-world] office in London. Each participant listened to a Moodsonic Soundscape (lapping lake waves) . . . and...
Headphones and Privacy
Mueller and colleagues share that “Office workers lately use active noise-cancelling (ANC) headphones to improve the acoustic situation by blocking unwanted sound. . . . Two studies were conducted to examine if ANC headphones...
Music and Pain
Howlin, Stapleton, and Rooney collected information from adults experiencing acute pain. They share that “Music is increasingly being recognised as an adjuvant [auxiliary] treatment for pain management. Music can help to decrease the experience...
Colours and Concert-Halls
Chen and Cabrera studied experiences in concert halls; select surfaces were different colours for the various conditions tested. Study participants rated “loudness, reverberance, and their visual and auditory preference for multiple virtual reality scenes...
Attractiveness and scent….
Chen and Spence studied how scents influence perceptions of facial attractiveness; it seems likely that their findings can also be applied in other contexts. The duo report they studied “whether the presentation of a...
Why do we love the smell after it has rained?
Nabhan, Daugherty, and Hartung report that “Desert dwellers know it well: the smell of rain and the feeling of euphoria that comes when a storm washes over the parched earth. That feeling, and the...
What to Take on a Trip Anywhere
It’s nice to feel at home even when you aren’t-but unless your luggage is much, much larger than the suitcase I travel with, you can’t take much of your home with you when you...
Soundscapes and Eating
Peng-Li and colleagues report that “Soft nature sounds [ocean waves] and loud restaurant noises [chattering and tableware noises] were employed to induce emotional relaxation and arousal respectively. One hundred and one healthy university students...
Hearing and Thinking
Radun and colleagues investigated the effects of particular sorts of sound on cognitive performance and report that “Exposure to impulsive sound (65 dB LAeq) was compared with quiet sound (35 dB LAeq) and steady-state sound (65 dB...
Infant cries and minor keys
Zeloni and Pavani share that “In Western music and in music of other cultures, minor chords, modes and intervals evoke sadness. . . . we asked expert musicians to transcribe into music scores spontaneous...
Coordinating Our Thinking About Sensory Experiences
Scheller and Sui report that “When interacting with the environment, humans exhibit robust biases toward information that pertains to themselves: Self-relevant information is processed faster and yields more accurate responses than information linked to...
Biophilic Design in Workplaces
All those plants you see around your workplace are not there by chance. Research consistently shows that being able to see a couple of plants (not more) as you work boost your cognitive performance,...
Hearing the right “silent” messages
Space designers and managers are also really focused on you getting the right messages from what they provide. Some research studies have found that the nonverbal messages that you pull from your workplace have...
Healing Spaces
Healing spaces have probably been researched more extensively than any other sort of place (largely because it’s so easy to quantify the results of design actions taken there; after something changes more or less...
Stores
Certain conditions in stores make it more likely that we’ll make purchases and enjoy doing so. Research also indicates that most of the conditions that boost sales in physical stores also do so online,...
As the video gets worse, we start to shout…
Researchers have determined that “The more the video quality of an online meeting degrades, the louder we start talking, a new study by researchers at Radboud University and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics...
How to use Sound?
A few of us actively soundscape the worlds in which we live, but way too many of us just let sound happen to us, which is an opportunity missed. To calm yourself via your...
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