Field · 24 records
Acoustics + soundscape
Noise, speech, reverberation, sound type and restorative sound
family: Core
ND-0001 · 2021 · Systematic review
How indoor environmental quality affects occupants' cognitive functions: A systematic review
Wang et al. Building and Environment
Poorer indoor conditions were often associated with poorer cognitive performance, but effects varied by factor, task and study design.
ND-0002 · 2026 · Systematic review
Indoor environmental quality and the brain: A systematic review of physiological and neural evidence
Authors per journal record. Building and Environment
Visual and thermal conditions showed the most consistent relationships with neural and physiological signals across the reviewed evidence.
ND-0012 · 2018 · Review
A review of the environmental parameters necessary for an optimal sleep environment
Authors per journal record. Building and Environment
Noise, temperature, light and air quality each have plausible and documented effects on sleep quality and continuity.
ND-0018 · 2025 · Narrative review
Dreamy Dwellings: How the Sleep Environment Affects Sleep Health in Adults
Gregory D. M. Potter. Lifestyle Medicine
Reviews multiple environmental inputs that can alter sleep, including sensory, thermal and social factors.
ND-0019 · 2011 · Experimental study
Open-plan office noise: Cognitive performance and restoration
Jahncke et al. Journal of Environmental Psychology
Higher office noise impaired word memory and increased tiredness; restorative content after exposure helped recover perceived energy.
ND-0020 · 2005 · Review
Auditory distraction from low-intensity noise: a review of the consequences for learning and workplace environments
C. P. Beaman. Applied Cognitive Psychology
Low-intensity sound can impair serial recall and other tasks even when it is not subjectively loud.
ND-0021 · 2020 · Meta-analysis / synthesis
The relation between intelligibility of irrelevant speech and cognitive performance: a revised model
Haapakangas et al. Indoor Air
Performance declines became more likely as irrelevant speech became more intelligible; verbal short-term memory was especially sensitive.
ND-0022 · 2020 · Experimental study
Irrelevant speech effect in open-plan offices: A laboratory study
Kostallari et al. Applied Acoustics
Irrelevant speech degraded aspects of cognitive task performance in an office-like context.
ND-0023 · 2021 · Meta-analysis
A synthesis of health benefits of natural sounds and their distribution in national parks
Buxton et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Natural sounds were associated with improved affect and health-related outcomes and reduced stress or annoyance across the synthesized literature.
ND-0024 · 2024 · Systematic review and meta-analysis
Effects of natural sound exposure on health recovery: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Authors per journal record. Science of the Total Environment
The pooled evidence supports health-recovery benefits from exposure to natural sounds, while effect sizes vary by outcome and stimulus.
ND-0025 · 2022 · Review
Classroom acoustics and cognition: review of the effects of noise and reverberation on primary school children
Mealings. Building Acoustics
Noise and reverberation can impair speech perception, memory, attention and learning, with children especially vulnerable.
ND-0026 · 2022 · Review
Acoustical parameters for learning in classroom: A review
Authors per journal record. Building and Environment
Classroom acoustic parameters are linked to speech intelligibility and learning-relevant outcomes.
ND-0077 · 2008 · Systematic review
A Review of the Research Literature on Evidence-Based Healthcare Design
Ulrich et al. HERD
The review found design-relevant evidence across infection control, acoustics, nature/daylight, ergonomics, room type and layout, while quality varied by topic.
ND-0084 · 2024 · Experimental study
Multisensory nature exposure in the workplace: Exploring the restorative benefits of smell experiences
Yildirim, Globa, Gocer & Brambilla. Building and Environment
A multisensory biophilic workplace condition improved stress, mood and cognitive outcomes relative to a non-biophilic condition; olfactory pleasantness contributed to restoration.
ND-0085 · 2024 · Experimental study
Beyond sight: Comparing traditional virtual reality and immersive multi-sensory environments in stress reduction of university students
Baktash, Kim & Shirazi. Frontiers in Virtual Reality
Both immersive conditions reduced anxiety; the multisensory condition showed a larger reduction trend, though the between-group difference was not statistically decisive.
ND-0090 · 2024 · Book chapter / review
Fractal Fluency: Processing of Fractal Stimuli Across Sight, Sound, and Touch
Taylor et al. Advances in Neurobiology
Extends fractal-fluency ideas across vision, sound and touch and links mid-range complexity to processing ease and stress outcomes.
ND-0102 · 2018 · Guideline
Environmental noise guidelines for the European Region
World Health Organization. World Health Organization
Provides health-based recommendations for environmental-noise exposures, including night-time impacts on sleep.
ND-0103 · 2008 · Standard
ISO 3382-2:2008 Acoustics - Measurement of room acoustic parameters - Part 2: Reverberation time in ordinary rooms
International Organization for Standardization. ISO
Specifies methods for measuring reverberation time in ordinary rooms.
ND-0104 · 2026 · Rating system / standard
WELL Building Standard v2
International WELL Building Institute. IWBI
Organizes health-supportive building strategies into ten concepts with preconditions and optimizations.
ND-0123 · 2026 · Behavioral experiment
The (Reverse) Colavita Effect in Emotion Recognition: Children and Adults Come to Different Conclusions When Categorising Incongruent Emotional Audio-Visual Stimuli
Ross, Munro, Prasetyo, O'Toole, Hewakadawedduwage, Smith & Davies. Infant and Child Development
With matching cues, children and adults were equally accurate. With conflicting cues, children reported the emotion they heard at above-chance rates across every emotion pairing, while adults responded at chance or went with what they saw. The auditory bias was strongest in younger children.
ND-0125 · 2026 · Closed-loop stimulation experiment
Closed-loop auditory stimulation in phase with slow waves during sleep enhances cerebrospinal fluid flow in humans
Levitt, Zeng, Yang, Jacob & Lewis. Science Translational Medicine
Short pink-noise bursts delivered at slow-wave peaks increased slow waves and caused larger CSF flow waves. The effect depended on phase: sound that missed the peak did not produce it. Widespread hemodynamic waves followed the stimulus.
ND-0128 · 2026 · Experimental EEG study
Late cross-modal biases in neural spatial representations revealed by EEG decoding
Buhmann, Robinson, Mattingley & Rideaux. Journal of Neuroscience
Early auditory and visual spatial representations stayed independent. A shared spatial representation emerged at about 200 ms, after which each modality was pulled toward the other, auditory first and visual later. Behaviorally, people integrated the cues with slight visual over-weighting.
ND-0133 · 2026 · Experimental virtual reality study
Associations of soundscape naturalness and natural-element complexity with short-term psychophysiological restoration in campus green spaces: a virtual reality study
Zhang & Guo. Frontiers in Psychology
Responses aligned most consistently with the soundscape dimension rather than the visual one. Under medium and high soundscape naturalness, medium natural-element complexity produced more favorable patterns than either low or high, consistent with an inverted-U rather than a more-is-better relationship.
ND-0134 · 2026 · Experimental EEG study
Neural signatures of auditory distraction and cognitive demand during working memory performance
Leitner & Wriessnegger. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 20, 1919376
Accuracy rose slightly under distraction alone and under time pressure alone, relative to baseline, and fell only when the two occurred together. Single demands appeared to be absorbed by compensatory effort; the combination was not.