Description
- Abstract:
- Background: Noise pollution is sound that is unwanted, unpleasant, and disruptive to the person who perceives it. It is known that noise pollution can cause cardiovascular issues, hearing loss, sleep disturbances, and psychological effects. This makes it important to study the nature of noise pollution, and how and why it affects human health. Aims: This study aims to use EEG (electroencephalography) to measure the effects of both contextual and non-contextual noise pollution on those with self-reported anxiety symptoms, while controlling for neighborhood noise level. In this case contextual noise pollution meaning a perceived noise can be recognized such as traffic, and non-contextual means a perceived noise is unrecognizable such as only having the underlying sounds of traffic. Methods: This is a non-randomized experiment study using data collected from participants in the Greater Boston area in 2020. There were a total of 22 participants, 20 women and 2 men. Participants were put into a soundproof booth and fitted with a dry EEG headset and headphones, and were then exposed to different contextual and non-contextual sounds. Exposure to each sound lasted 2 minutes. All statistical analysis was performed in Rstudio. Results: From statistical analysis results varied from each sound type studied. In all noise exposures considered traffic, construction, and nature had no similar EEG results when comparing contextual and non-contextual noise exposure. Contextual noise and non-contextual noise had significant results at alpha level of 0.05 when using ANOVA and Tukey analysis. This could be seen on nodes T5 and X2 for traffic within moderate anxiety, O2 for non-contextual construction within sex differences, and Cz for non-contextual nature within sex differences. Conclusion: From the results of this study contextual and non contextual noise exposure should continue to be studied, and may hold some merit in understanding noise exposures. No results are fully conclusive due to the lack of power and the amount of stratification, but there were observed differences between non-contextual and contextual noises.
- Notes:
- Thesis (M. P. H.)--Brown University, 2023
Citation
Henry, Marcus William,
"The Impact of Contextual and Non-contextual Noise and Anxiety on Brain Signaling"
(2023).
Public Health Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:v2ksbbnr/
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Public Health Theses and Dissertations
Theses and Dissertations for the Public Health department....