Transcript
If you have ADHD or not, this test will show you why listening to different levels of noise might help improve your mental performance. Through a phenomena called stochastic resonance, scientists have known for a long time that sometimes adding noise to a signal can counterintuitively be helpful, actually boosting it. If this is a pure signal, adding noise to it makes it look sort of like this. Now let's say there's a detection threshold, like how you can only hear sounds above a certain level or pick out images above a certain contrast. If the signal is below that level, but you add random noise, it'll make it sometimes jump level.
This image is too washed out for you to detect, but adding a little noise makes it better, and too much just makes it worse. And the effect gets stronger with audio and video rather than pictures. Which brings us back to the test. Can you spot the words hidden in this image? I bet not. But I'll now start adding noise and tweaking the contrast, and I want you to comment at which level you can start making out the letters, make out all of them, and then the levels you start losing them. Ready? Let's go. So comment how you did, whether or not you have medication.
Additional notes
Caption: Replying to @Sarah this is one theory for why the brain maintains a medium level of backgneural noise, helping it lock on to new stimuli. In one really cool study they gave people shoes rhat stimulates the soles of people’s feet, resulting in better balance for those with balance problems! @Avisha - 🧬Science Made Simple #science #edutok #learnontiktok #brownnoise #adhd
References
- Original source page: Noise & ADHD Script
- Detection threshold / stochastic resonance reference - DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.78.1186