Sounds

I love having tiny hair cells in my cochlea decode pressure waves into neural signals, it’s the best. This was almost going to be a musing, but it’s turned into something more informative than I thought, so now it’s a short article. I’ve been listening to a lot of sounds recently. Music, definitely, but also a new study gem I recently started to use—binaural beats¹.

Focus, Focus, Focus

40Hz gamma waves have been proven to literally enhance cognition². Better attention and working memory, just because you’re listening to some video on YouTube is pretty awesome. I was definitely feeling it too. The way these binaural beats work, and what makes them actually “binaural”, is that there is a frequency difference between both ears. One ear has, say, 80Hz, and the other 120Hz. The brain is basically tricked into hearing a third phantom frequency of 40Hz, and the brainstem prompts the rest of the brain to align neural activity to this gamma state. The gamma state has been shown to enhance focus, cognitive performance, and mental clarity, so boom, the sound gets us there.

Loved that for finals. Mental clarity is probably up there in my top 10ish feelings. I may even toss it into top 5.

But, the other sounds I love, tires on a wet road, construction, or city bustle, don’t feel so scientific. So let’s make it!

Tires on a wet road…

Let’s think about this. The brain adores patterns. It just seriously loves them. That’s why music is the way it is, why it has structure, why melodies and progressions exist. If I think about tires on a wet road, it’s predictable. You can hear the cars coming, the gentle swoosh of the road, the soft hiss, it’s calming. You know what to expect, and the predictability paired with the soothing tone gives off a sense of reassurance, stability, allowing you to relax and enjoy existing.

One of my favorites for sure.

I could also have good memories associated with the tires. I personally just love the rain, and visiting grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in rainy Ireland definitely brings with it a certain nostalgia.

Construction…

Maybe an odd pick, I know some people who despise construction, but for me, I could listen to it all day. Again with the patterns, construction has just the right amount of consistency to mask the little distractions that can put us on edge, and just the right amount of variability to make it engaging and interesting.

There’s also just arguably some cool sounds. Hammers, maybe some shouting, mix in a little bit of sawing, if it's all distant and not too loud, it creates the perfect harmony.

But on a more human level, construction symbolizes progress, change, and creation. Subconsciously reminding us that the world is turning, that people are out there doing things, that new beginnings are right around the corner, construction is energizing and reassuring. I love it, whoever doesn’t…grow up.

City bustle…

Perfect segway into the city bustle. Cars honking, footsteps, the murmuring of voices, birds, buses, coffee cups, you name it. Again we can find some patterns, predictability even, with the right amount of randomness to make it feel real. It’s so easy to tune out and have it become the background hum, a sort of white noise, and then tuning back in, it’s easy to pick out fine details and deconstruct an incredibly complex mesh of different noises.

But again, city bustle, quintessentially, is life. It’s that sense of purpose–momentum–that spark, that pushes you into your day, that energizes you to engage proactively with the world that makes city bustle so great. That’s also what makes cities themselves so great. Put all these humans into one spot, yeah you’ll run into some challenges, but the city itself will take on a unique, beautiful character. Something new and totally alive.

Top 1, no questions.

Brief Conclusions

All these sounds have a couple things in common. They all have predictable, rhythmic patterns that can act as white noise, soothing us and masking distractions. Each also all have deep complexities. While regular white noise is literally just that, noise, there is meaning, intent, and a story behind all the elements of these sounds³. And then there’s the human component, the higher level pleasure I get from all these. It’s the fact they all signal movement, that they all signal life. I’m uplifted and energized knowing that other humans are chasing dreams, working towards goals, and living life.

Stimulating, reassuring, energizing, but also calming, these have to be my big 3. Ergo, my perfect environment might just be a rainy city under construction, ergo I guess I know where I’ll be after college.

Writing → Finished
40Hz gamma → 60db Drake

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Footnotes

1. Courtesy A. Huberman ↩

2. Studies done in 2022, 2020, and 2015 ↩

3. Maybe not so much on the car tires, but I feel like that one has enough emotional salience to make it great despite being a simpler sound. ↩