How Prolonged Exposure to Sweet, Blessed Silence Benefits the Brain

How Prolonged Exposure to Sweet, Blessed Silence Benefits the Brain

Photo: May Xiong/Getty Images I write this to the soundtrack of a literal chainsaw; there are men at work outside my window attempting to – well, I’m not exactly sure what they’re attempting to do. Cut down a tree? Cut down branches of a tree? Whatever it is they’re doing, they are making an awful lot of noise as they do it. Much has been written about “noise pollution,” a phrase coined in the 1960s, when scientists discovered that everyday exposure to the loudness of highways and airports was linked with a variety of health concerns: heart disease, sleep problems, high blood pressure, and, least surprisingly, hearing loss. And, as Maggie Koerth-Baker reminds in FiveThirtyEight this week, sounds can become so intense that they can even cause much more immediate…


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