The Science of Noise and ADHD: Does It Really Help?

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If you have ADHD, does noise like this actually help you focus better and be more productive? Or is it just a gimmick and a placebo? What if you don't have ADHD? And how is this image related? Let's look at the science. Welcome back to 30 studies to change your life. Noise edition. Today I may cheat and cite more than one. Last time we covered the differences between white, pink, and brown noise and some of the uses for them. They all wanted to know about the ADHD brain. So let's nerd out.

The moderate brain arousal model states that people with ADHD have lower baseline levels of dopamine, also corresponds to lower background levels of neural noise, the normal continuous firings of your brain. Dopamine and brain activity then spikes up higher in response to any sort of environmental stimuli. It's like being in a super quiet room and then suddenly a zombie jumps out at you. That pulls your attention way more than the same zombie would if he jumped out at you in the middle of a crowded street. And once the zombie is there, it holds your focus for way longer, rather than letting your brain reset to quiet room mode. Your brain is afraid of being quiet. And it turns out that listening to the right level of continuous noise can help boost that brain noise, almost analogous to how amphetamines boost that baseline dopamine level. But there's a sweet spot.

This study had teachers rank students by attentiveness level. They then had them take memory tests with and without white noise playing. The inattentive kids did better when white noise was playing, but the attentive kids did worse. So they followed it up with another study that ranked kids by inattentive, superattentive, or normal attentive. This time, the noise helped the inattentive kids, It hurt the super attentive kids, but it didn't do much to the kids in the middle. And speaking of middle neurotypical folks, another study last year found that low levels of white noise helped boost many different aspects of brain function and lower stress levels. But louder noise only helped working memory while at the same time raising stress levels in neurotypical adults.

There are so many cool studies on this topic that I'll cover soon in a longer YouTube video. But for now, here's a takeaway. Steady noise that doesn't pull your attention away seems to have a stimulating effect on the brain. than others, so it's all about finding the sweet spot. Most of the studies have been on white noise, but there are a few also covering pink noise and brown noise. And I can share some personal theories that I've developed after doing all of this research if you're interested.

But what about this image? I didn't forget, did you? It's an enigma, literally. That's what the painting by French artist Izye-Levion is called. It produces the illusion of motion, partially related to micro eye movements. But Nobel Prize-winning physicist turned neurobiologist, Donald Glaser, theorized that the motion you see is also related to the background neural noise in your brain. He had some other super cool visual demos that I'll share with you guys next time.

Additional notes

Caption: Replying to @Mother of GSDs 💜🖤🤍 brown noise for ADHD is all the rage, but most direct research has been done on white noise! Buut when you start really digging there are some fascinating differences between the SHAPE of the natural neural noise spectrum in ADHD folks vs neurotypical. It even relates to self-esteem… I’ve been going down a auper deep rabbit hole on this one. Because i’m a science nerd. 🤓 If you want a great overview study on this topic, check out PMID: 30670235 or wait for my upcoming YT video + article. And if youre a fellow nerd who made it this deep into the caption, leave a comment that includes “sci-nerd here!” #science #nerd #edutok #brownnoise #psychology #learnontiktok #adhd #productivity

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