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Cheryl Leonard is a San Francisco-based composer, performer, field recordist, and instrument builder whose works investigate sounds, structures, and objects from the natural world. Her projects cultivate stones, wood, water, ice, sand, shells, feathers, and bones as musical instruments, and often feature one-of-a-kind sculptural instruments and field recordings from remote locales. Leonard is fascinated by the subtle textures and intricacies of sounds, especially very quiet phenomena. She uses microphones to uncover and explore micro-aural worlds within her sound sources, and develops compositions that highlight the unique voices she discovers. Structurally and thematically, her creations often reflect on natural phenomena and processes. Her recent work focuses on environmental issues, especially climate change in the polar regions and California and the extinction of species.

The Nature Sounds Society is a world-wide organization whose principal purpose is to encourage the preservation, appreciation and creative use of natural sounds. The Society promotes education in the technological, scientific and aesthetic aspects of nature sounds through its programs and a diverse network of contacts.

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Earth.fm is a non-profit, growing library of 700+ immersive natural soundscapes from all over the world. Inspired by the life-changing teachings of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, our aspiration is to help each other wake up to the miracle of Mother Earth and do everything in our power to support her.

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Ulrich et al. [6] used video films with sound and found faster physiological stress recovery during exposure to films depicting nature compared with urban environments. However, Ulrich et al. did not control for sound pressure level. Indeed, the soundtrack to their films of urban environmental settings had considerably higher sound pressure levels than the soundtrack to the films of nature environments. This makes it difficult to determine whether the effect was related to the characteristics of the environments or to differences in sound pressure levels. So, although positive effects of visual natural environments are well established, no research has been done using only auditory stimulation with controlled stimuli and sound pressure levels.

During the baseline period, the participants were asked to relax in silence. At the end of the period a prerecorded female voice reminded them that the first stress test was about to begin. After the stress test, the female voice instructed the participants to relax and one of the four experimental sounds was presented. This switch between stress test and recovery was repeated three more times (see Figure 1).

Figure 3 suggests that although SCL immediately after the stressor was similar for the different conditions, recovery was faster during exposure to the nature sound than to the three noise conditions. The ambient and low noise had the second fastest, and high noise the slowest recovery. A slight upswing during the last 50 seconds of the recovery period was seen for SCL recovery during the high noise, possibly reflecting an increased arousal due to prolonged exposure to the unpleasant noise. In a 4 4 mixed ANCOVA, the mean SCL for each participant during the recovery period was used as the dependent variable, sound as a within-subjects variable, and presentation order as a between-subjects variable. The baseline measure was included in the analysis as covariate [27].

where y is baseline corrected SCL, x is time (in seconds) and b1, b2 and b3 are constants. Figure 4 shows the fitted functions for the four experimental sounds. The fit, R2, for the nature sound, low noise and ambient noise was > 0.99, it was slightly lower for the high noise, R2 = 0.96. RMS-error for the nature, high noise, ambient and low noise sound was 0.0088, 0.017, 0.0090 and 0.0097 S, respectively. The half life recovery was calculated using Equation 1, by solving for x at the point where SCL had been reduced by half, compared with its value at x = 0 (see dotted line in Figure 4). The high noise had the longest half life of 159.8 s, the half life of the other three were 121.3 s for ambient noise, low noise 111.4 s and nature sound 101.3 s. Reliable statistical testing of individual half life values was not possible, since the estimated constants in several cases generated complex numbers, that resulted in missing data when half life values were calculated.

Skin conductance level (SCL) as a function of time, shown separately for the four sounds. Curves were fitted to the group data. Constants of Equation 1 and half life value (x) are indicated in each diagram.

The present results suggest that recovery from sympathetic arousal is affected by type of sound (nature sound versus noise). Recovery was faster during the nature sound (50 dBA) compared with the noises, including the low noise (50 dBA) and the ambient noise (40 dBA). The mechanisms behind the faster recovery could be related to positive emotions (pleasantness), evoked by the nature sound as suggested by previous research using non audio film stimuli [9]. Other perceptual attributes may also influence recovery. The Ambient noise was perceived as less familiar than the other sounds (Figure 2), presumably because it contained no identifiable sources. One may speculate that this lack of information might have caused an increased mental activity and thereby an increased SCL, compared with the nature sound (cf. [28]). An effect of sound pressure level can be seen in the difference between high and low noise, this difference is in line with previous psychoacoustic research [12] and is not a surprising considering the large difference (30 dBA) in sound pressure level.

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Research suggests that visual impressions of natural compared with urban environments facilitate recovery after psychological stress. To test whether auditory stimulation has similar effects, 40 subjects were exposed to sounds from nature or noisy environments after a stressful mental arithmetic task. Skin conductance level (SCL) was used to index sympathetic activation, and high frequency heart rate variability (HF HRV) was used to index parasympathetic activation. Although HF HRV showed no effects, SCL recovery tended to be faster during natural sound than noisy environments. These results suggest that nature sounds facilitate recovery from sympathetic activation after a psychological stressor.

Attention restoration theory (ART) posits that stimuli found in nature may restore directed attention functioning by reducing demands on the endogenous attention system. In the present experiment, we assessed whether nature-related cognitive benefits extended to auditory presentations of nature, a topic that has been understudied. To assess directed attention, we created a composite measure consisting of a backward digit span task and a dual n-back task. Participants completed these cognitive measures and an affective questionnaire before and after listening to and aesthetically judging either natural or urban soundscapes (between-participants). Relative to participants who were exposed to urban soundscapes, we observed significant improvements in cognitive performance for individuals exposed to nature. Urban soundscapes did not systematically affect performance either adversely or beneficially. Natural sounds did not differentially change positive or negative affect, despite these sounds being aesthetically preferred to urban sounds. These results provide initial evidence that brief experiences with natural sounds can improve directed attention functioning in a single experimental session.

The psychological benefits of interacting with nature have been discussed for well over a century (e.g., Olmsted, 1993), with research over the past few decades assessing how interactions with nature specifically may benefit cognition and cognitive development (e.g., Bratman, Hamilton, & Daily, 2012). For example, the extent of available green space has been positively associated with the development of executive functions in children, even after controlling for factors such as socioeconomic status (Dadvand et al., 2015). Even brief interventions in which participants take a walk through nature or view nature images on a computer screen have been shown to improve the functioning of directed attention relative to interventions in which participants are exposed to more urban environments (Berman, Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008).

One prominent account of how nature may improve aspects of cognition is attention restoration theory (ART), which posits that nature environments are particularly well-suited for reducing demands on the endogenous attention system, thereby allowing subsequent restoration of attentional functioning (e.g., Kaplan, 1995). The fact that simply viewing pictures of nature environments can improve performance on tasks requiring directed attention (Berman et al., 2008) suggests that nature, in part, may improve performance through the visual features that differentiate natural and urban scenes (see Berman et al., 2014), which may engage attentional mechanisms in a manner that restores directed attention. However, the focus on visual depictions of nature in the ART literature has resulted in a relative paucity of research on other modalities, such as audition. As such, the present experiment tests whether auditory representations of nature confer similar benefits to directed-attention functioning.

Beyond ART, two broad research findings support potential cognitive benefits from experiencing nature sounds. First, prior studies have demonstrated widespread associations between noise levels and health. Noise pollution (e.g., urban environmental noises with sustained, high-amplitudes) has been associated with greater amounts of reported stress and distraction (e.g., de Paiva Vianna, Cardoso, & Rodrigues, 2015), which can lead to chronic learning and attention problems (see Hammer, Swinburn, & Neitzel, 2014). Thus, natural sounds may improve aspects of cognition relative to urban sounds because these two classes of sounds generally differ with respect to their amplitude in the real world (see McDonald et al., 1995), with nature sounds being thought to provide a quiet respite from urban environments (Mace, Bell, & Loomis, 2004). In this kind of framework, however, nature sounds may not confer any cognitive benefits relative to urban sounds when presented at the same amplitude. 17dc91bb1f