Differential effects of white noise in cognitive and perceptual tasks
Beneficial effects of noise on higher cognition have recently attracted attention. Hypothesizing an involvement of the mesolimbic dopamine system and its functional interactions with cortical areas, the current study aimed to demonstrate a facilitation of dopamine-dependent attentional and mnemonic...
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2015
|
| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4630540/ |
| id |
pubmed-4630540 |
|---|---|
| recordtype |
oai_dc |
| spelling |
pubmed-46305402015-11-17 Differential effects of white noise in cognitive and perceptual tasks Herweg, Nora A. Bunzeck, Nico Psychology Beneficial effects of noise on higher cognition have recently attracted attention. Hypothesizing an involvement of the mesolimbic dopamine system and its functional interactions with cortical areas, the current study aimed to demonstrate a facilitation of dopamine-dependent attentional and mnemonic functions by externally applying white noise in five behavioral experiments including a total sample of 167 healthy human subjects. During working memory, acoustic white noise impaired accuracy when presented during the maintenance period (Experiments 1–3). In a reward based long-term memory task, white noise accelerated perceptual judgments for scene images during encoding but left subsequent recognition memory unaffected (Experiment 4). In a modified Posner task (Experiment 5), the benefit due to white noise in attentional orienting correlated weakly with reward dependence, a personality trait that has been associated with the dopaminergic system. These results suggest that white noise has no general effect on cognitive functions. Instead, they indicate differential effects on perception and cognition depending on a variety of factors such as task demands and timing of white noise presentation. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-11-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4630540/ /pubmed/26579024 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01639 Text en Copyright © 2015 Herweg and Bunzeck. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Herweg, Nora A. Bunzeck, Nico |
| spellingShingle |
Herweg, Nora A. Bunzeck, Nico Differential effects of white noise in cognitive and perceptual tasks |
| author_facet |
Herweg, Nora A. Bunzeck, Nico |
| author_sort |
Herweg, Nora A. |
| title |
Differential effects of white noise in cognitive and perceptual tasks |
| title_short |
Differential effects of white noise in cognitive and perceptual tasks |
| title_full |
Differential effects of white noise in cognitive and perceptual tasks |
| title_fullStr |
Differential effects of white noise in cognitive and perceptual tasks |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Differential effects of white noise in cognitive and perceptual tasks |
| title_sort |
differential effects of white noise in cognitive and perceptual tasks |
| description |
Beneficial effects of noise on higher cognition have recently attracted attention. Hypothesizing an involvement of the mesolimbic dopamine system and its functional interactions with cortical areas, the current study aimed to demonstrate a facilitation of dopamine-dependent attentional and mnemonic functions by externally applying white noise in five behavioral experiments including a total sample of 167 healthy human subjects. During working memory, acoustic white noise impaired accuracy when presented during the maintenance period (Experiments 1–3). In a reward based long-term memory task, white noise accelerated perceptual judgments for scene images during encoding but left subsequent recognition memory unaffected (Experiment 4). In a modified Posner task (Experiment 5), the benefit due to white noise in attentional orienting correlated weakly with reward dependence, a personality trait that has been associated with the dopaminergic system. These results suggest that white noise has no general effect on cognitive functions. Instead, they indicate differential effects on perception and cognition depending on a variety of factors such as task demands and timing of white noise presentation. |
| publisher |
Frontiers Media S.A. |
| publishDate |
2015 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4630540/ |
| _version_ |
1613496408353013760 |