I recently watched a short TED Talk on the physiological effects of ambient sound, and how unaware we can be of these effects. One interesting tidbit is that bird song is supposedly very relaxing and helps people focus. The evolutionary story around that is that bird song is an aural cue that there are no predators around. Presumably, this is true for other animals than humans, so the effect might be traced long into our history.

In any case, I decided to try this for myself, and my subjective experience of the last few days is that it works. I feel more focused, more “in my body.” You can try it for yourself real quick with this Youtube playlist of birdsongs. I’m actually using high-quality recordings from Naturespace. These have a 3-dimensional quality to them, and are tuned to different headphones, but they cost a couple bucks. They also sell iPhone apps.

I recommend listening at low volume for 10-15 minutes to judge the effect for yourself.

Related Posts:

• More Notes on the Helio (July, 2007)
• Ninja Tools for Meetings (May, 2009)
• Scatological Programming (December, 2005)
• TED Talks: Kite Wind Power, Military Robots, Behavioral Economics (May, 2009)
• Crowdsourcing (December, 2009)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 9:37 am and is filed under brains, mindfulness, technology, tedtalk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.