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Monday, February 17, 2025
Experiment Proves Infrasonic Sound Can Cause People To Feel Unsettled And Afraid
TwistedSifter: For awhile now researchers have thought that infrasonic sound could be the thing to explain the “feelings” of danger or fear that people get in random places.
Especially if many people experience the same feeling in a similar spot – like in places folks assume must be “haunted.”
3 comments:
Josh Hillers
said...
This information about infrasonic sound begs the question of what can be done on stage to use these effects to our advantage in theater and if there are further ways in which the experience of theater can be designed to achieve a particular vision. New advances in our understanding of how stimuli affect our psychological state is something that sound and lighting designers in particular ought to pay attention to to expand their toolbox of design and better understand how to create particular effects when they are needed. The next questions for this use of infrasonics sound is the applicability of this to different performance spaces and its efficacy in design because if nobody is able to hear these sounds, then it may be even more difficult to control and design to. Regardless, paying attention to discoveries in other fields proves to continue to be useful to creating better theater and more unique experiences for the audience.
I was curious about this article as someone who attended not one not two but three separate lectures about the neurological process of audition this year (this happens to be one main area of overlap between the technical theatre world and neuroscience). It’s really interesting that we can perceive infrasound (even subconsciously) given that it is structurally impossible for the cochlea or even skin mechanoreceptors sensitive to vibration (pacinian corpuscules) to respond to it. Apparently there are a lot of public health concerns about infrasound in the modern day particularly because industrialization has been the genesis for many new sources of infrasound that didn’t exist a few centuries ago, including wind turbines. One of the major studies on the effects of infrasound on humans looked at people living near large wind turbines in Massachusetts who experienced sleep disturbances and vestibular problems (nausea and vertigo), and the researchers concluded that there was strong evidence that the vestibular system was being stimulated by the infrasound. I’m wondering if this is because they create like standing waves in the fluid in the inner ear or something.
It is super cool how one sense can affect all of our other senses and give us physical symptoms. Tech like this could be used in more immersive productions and in things like haunted houses. The use of it under music, while the audience is unaware. One thing Julian mentioned in his comment was the health effects. As both Julian and the article mentions, there are health side effects, whether psychological or physical. There of course is the damage to your ears it may cause, and also whatever the side effects of the fear, anxiety and sometimes hallucinations it may cause. In my very limited knowledge, I think it is probably one of those things that are fine in moderation. It’s not good for your hearing to be going to loud concerts everyday– hence why performers and technicians wear hearing protection– but going to a few every year is fine.
3 comments:
This information about infrasonic sound begs the question of what can be done on stage to use these effects to our advantage in theater and if there are further ways in which the experience of theater can be designed to achieve a particular vision. New advances in our understanding of how stimuli affect our psychological state is something that sound and lighting designers in particular ought to pay attention to to expand their toolbox of design and better understand how to create particular effects when they are needed. The next questions for this use of infrasonics sound is the applicability of this to different performance spaces and its efficacy in design because if nobody is able to hear these sounds, then it may be even more difficult to control and design to. Regardless, paying attention to discoveries in other fields proves to continue to be useful to creating better theater and more unique experiences for the audience.
I was curious about this article as someone who attended not one not two but three separate lectures about the neurological process of audition this year (this happens to be one main area of overlap between the technical theatre world and neuroscience). It’s really interesting that we can perceive infrasound (even subconsciously) given that it is structurally impossible for the cochlea or even skin mechanoreceptors sensitive to vibration (pacinian corpuscules) to respond to it. Apparently there are a lot of public health concerns about infrasound in the modern day particularly because industrialization has been the genesis for many new sources of infrasound that didn’t exist a few centuries ago, including wind turbines. One of the major studies on the effects of infrasound on humans looked at people living near large wind turbines in Massachusetts who experienced sleep disturbances and vestibular problems (nausea and vertigo), and the researchers concluded that there was strong evidence that the vestibular system was being stimulated by the infrasound. I’m wondering if this is because they create like standing waves in the fluid in the inner ear or something.
It is super cool how one sense can affect all of our other senses and give us physical symptoms. Tech like this could be used in more immersive productions and in things like haunted houses. The use of it under music, while the audience is unaware. One thing Julian mentioned in his comment was the health effects. As both Julian and the article mentions, there are health side effects, whether psychological or physical. There of course is the damage to your ears it may cause, and also whatever the side effects of the fear, anxiety and sometimes hallucinations it may cause. In my very limited knowledge, I think it is probably one of those things that are fine in moderation. It’s not good for your hearing to be going to loud concerts everyday– hence why performers and technicians wear hearing protection– but going to a few every year is fine.
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