How listening to nature sounds improves health

As well as being a way to engage with the natural spaces which continue to be imperiled by human activity, soundscapes like those featured on Earth.fm offer benefits for listeners’ mental health and wellbeing.

Numerous studies have endorsed the link between nature sounds and improvements to mental health (even when those sounds are only experienced via recordings). Here, we investigate these findings.

The effect of nature on health

More broadly, time spent in, or exposed to nature is increasingly understood to have multiple beneficial effects for both physical and mental health. 

As a teenager, Roger Ulrich – later to become an “evidence-based healthcare design researcher” – was unable to leave his bed as a result of kidney disease. However, he credited his view of a pine tree outside with allowing him to maintain a sense of positivity. In later life, inspired by this experience, Ulrich wrote a paper which showed that views of nature improved hospital patients’ rates of recovery. 

The efficacy of exposure to nature as a way to reduce stress has subsequently been confirmed by various further studies, and become more and more accepted by the mainstream; for example, ‘green social prescribing’ is now endorsed by NHS England.

In addition, interacting with nature can improve memory and the capacity for creativity, and reduce symptoms of depression and sensations of isolation. It also “fosters a sense of value for ourselves, others, and the world” – including expanding individuals’ desire for the conservation of nature.

As an aside, it’s intriguing to note that sound is not the only stimuli from which we can gain “wellbeing benefits from interacting with nature”; smell can have equivalent effects.

🎧 Listen to Forests of the World Playlist

But what about nature sounds?

Nature sounds “are empirically reported to be subjectively more pleasant than artificial sounds”, with birdsong, in particular, having been observed to have especially positive effects for mental health and wellbeing.

Across three studies where British residents listened to, rated, and commented on bird sounds from the UK and Australia, findings suggest that these sounds alone can offer respite from stress and mental tiredness – though effectiveness varied according to species and in relation to associations individuals held in relation to particular sounds. 

Participants responded most positively to “quiet, high frequency” bird sounds, or those with “a level of complexity such as a melody” (as opposed to “loud, non-melodic, rough, simple or boring” calls). (Read more on the blog about melodic songs from the natural world.) It was also found that those “who [already] appreciated nature benefited the most[,] whereas those who preferred to remain indoors or were noise sensitive felt an indifference or had a negative response”.

Further research – carried out at King’s College London in 2022, drawing from real-time, real-world data self-reported through the Urban Mind app – “found that seeing or hearing birds is associated with an improvement in mental wellbeing that can last up to eight hours”, even in those who had received a diagnosis of depression. This evidence for a “direct link between seeing or hearing birds and positive mood” is extremely consequential, and “affirm[s] the importance of including acoustic environments in valuations of ecosystem services”.

This could lead to practical improvements to social prescribing schemes via visits to birdlife-rich environments, “inform spatial planning that focuses on managing natural soundscapes to enhance human health and experiences”, or lead to the use of recordings in settings such as psychiatric wards. Soundwalks could also “enhance awareness and appreciation of natural soundscapes” and their benefits.

🎧 Listen to Calm Birdsongs for Relaxation and Focus Playlist

Elsewhere, birdsong was found to “restore attention, enhance mood, decrease perceived stress, and increase the familiarity and pleasantness of a soundscape”. It also reduces anxiety, paranoia, and depression – whereas traffic noise “significant[ly] increase[s]” the latter. In addition, improved health and a general positive affect have been measured via improved mood and cognitive ability, while decreased pain, heart rate, and blood pressure have been used as metrics of reduced stress and annoyance.

Other sounds

A 2021 literature review and meta-analysis found that, from a selection of bird, water, and mixed natural sounds, “bird sounds had the largest mean effect size for stress and annoyance” – but “water sounds had the largest mean effect size for health and positive affect outcomes”. The authors noted that water sounds’ significance may be due “to the critical role of water for survival”, while also noting water’s capability to mask other sounds, and, in relation to urban greenspaces, to “increase the[ir] pleasantness and positive perception”.

🎧 Listen to Water Sounds for Sleep Playlist

How do nature sounds improve our health?

In relation to general natural soundscapes capacity for renewing and re-energizing people, another study from 2021 explored this effect by investigating results from before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Carried out in East China’s Xixi National Wetland Park, “results show[ed] that natural soundscapes have great [mentally] restorative benefits”, including for the restoration of ‘directed attention fatigue’ (distractability, forgetfulness, and impatience caused by a concerted focus on one task). 

The study’s authors hypothesized that, because natural soundscapes feature what they call “explorative potential […] and attention-holding properties”, they can “induce a novel situation quite different from daily routine […], and thus promote a coherence between the individual and the natural soundscapes”.

When the birds sing we are safe. It’s when birds stop singing that people need to worry.

In terms of birdsong specifically, despite its positive effects hinging, to some degree, upon listeners’ pre-existing receptiveness – for example, due to associations related to the warmer months – it may be that its benefits result from “a genetically built-in preference for nature, […] [since humans] spent thousands of years roaming the wilderness before constructing towns and cities”. An attraction to birdsong may therefore have arisen because it connotes the presence of food and water – and because, “when the birds sing [we] are safe, [and] it’s when birds stop singing that people need to worry”. Additionally, by “signalling the start of the day”, the dawn chorus “stimulates us cognitively”.

As such, a “genetic preference for sounds that make us think of nature” may have developed because, in the past, such sounds would have been “associated […] with places that had abundant resources”. Furthermore, “humans attend to patterns that signal danger and security”; since natural soundscapes can “provide indications of safety or [of] an ordered world without danger, [they] allow […] control over mind states, reduction in stress-related behavior, and mental recuperation”. The alternative – a natural soundscape in which indicators of safety are not present – would therefore “provoke vigilance and autonomically induce a more alert, aroused state” (ie, physiologically and psychologically activated responsiveness).

Yes, but what’s the hard science behind all this?

Two dominant theories address the nitty-gritty of the health benefits conferred by nature sounds.

The idea that stimuli from the natural world is beneficial as a result of evolutionary adaptation is known as stress recovery theory (SRT). 

Alternatively, attentional restoration theory (ART) suggests that stimuli from ‘artificial’ environments make considerable “cognitive and attentional demand[s]” of us. This is less true of stimuli from natural environments, meaning that they allow for a break from these demands, providing the opportunity to “recover […] [our] attentional capacity”.

Though ART acknowledges that exposure to natural stimuli prompts “increases in cognitive capacity”, it does not offer any physiological reason for these benefits (that is, related to the body and its systems). However, since “psychological factors do […] drive stress-related changes in bodily physiology”, the effects of nature sounds on the body, according to this model, could simply be a consequence of their effects on our mental/emotional states.

In a study, participants listened to what could either be the sound of ocean waves or of traffic, at the same time as being shown images of both “naturalistic ‘tranquil’” settings (beaches) and “artificial ‘non-tranquil’” ones (freeways). Mapped via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), their brain activity supported SRT, showing that natural stimuli increases both parasympathetic tone activation (the rest-and-digest system) and default mode network (DMN) activity. The DMN is a brain network related to “wakeful rest” and “self-directed thought and introspection”, such as daydreaming, mind-wandering, reminiscing, and planning for the future. 

In contrast, artificial stimuli activates the fight-or-flight response.

Why is this important?

As an example of the practical applications of nature-soundscape health benefits, 2024 research conducted by British train operator South Western Railway suggested that natural sounds such as birdsong, rivers, and rainfall reduced rail commuters’ stress levels by 35%. As Oxford professor of experimental psychology Charles Spence notes, it would surely be worth “investigat[ing] whether the[se] results could also be applicable to other forms of transport, such as long distance flights or lengthy drives”.

Questions such as these are only going to become more pressing. It is predicted that, by 2050, more than 70% of all people will be living urban lives. Urbanization “is associated with increased levels of mental illness, including depression”; this alone should be enough to make clear the significance of nature soundscapes for our health. This is true in terms of conserving the environments which produce such soundscapes; incorporating these environments into medical provision and social planning; and – where better alternatives aren’t viable – using recordings in both individual and public or therapeutic/medical contexts.

So, what now?

Environments rich in natural sounds are “rarely [found] near urban centers”. (Particularly ones which are free from anthropophonic sound; see ‘An Increasing Clamor: The Rise of Anthropophony’.) This is not to say that such spaces are impossible to find in cities – see our study on ‘The Quietest Places in the World’s Loudest Cities’, or use the Earth.fm app’s new ‘Recordings near you’ feature – but, as urbanization increases, their “importan[ce] for public health, due to both the benefits of natural sounds and the adverse effects of noise”, will only become more vital. (Due to limited travel options, this is especially true for low-income groups.)

Therefore, the assorted advantages of “conserv[ing] […] soundscapes in parks and other greenspaces […] includ[e] preserving important connections with nature, strengthening biodiversity conservation, and bolstering public health”. 

Manifesting these benefits demands “increas[ed] policy focus on biodiversity conservation” – but, in order for this to happen, increased public awareness will be necessary to drive wide support for such changes.

Meanwhile: on an individual level, turn off your music, stop listening to that podcast – and immerse yourself in Earth.fm’s library of nature soundscapes. (Or, better still, get outdoors and experience them in the flesh!)

Further reading

‘Ecotherapy: Benefits of the Great Outdoors’ and ‘Anxiety Versus Birdsong’ on the Earth.fm blog.

---

Featured photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash