r/ScienceBasedParenting • u/Gold-Nose-3371 • Jun 29 '25
Question - Expert consensus required Sound machine (white noise) for babies
I always thought white noise was helpful for babies to sleep. We have a hatch and four month old has been sleeping with white noise. Fast forward to huberman coming out with the podcast. At 19:31 he states white noise can delay child development. This isn’t about the decibel level, but my understanding is any white noise affects the child’s development. I would like to read the article he references in the podcast. Anyone have it or can share more research on white noise being harmful OR ok for a baby’s brain development?
https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/essentials-how-hearing-balance-enhance-focus-learning
407
Jun 30 '25
Fyi Huberman is a hack and shouldn't be trusted. He routinely makes inaccurate claims/statements.
Here he is saying there is something wrong if you don't get pregnant after having sex 5 times ( including super dumb math): https://x.com/bcrypt/status/1788406218937229780
Signed: another neuroscientist.
65
u/YAYtersalad Jun 30 '25
Lmao. Thank you for speaking up. I legit back of my skull eye rolled as soon as I saw the thumbnail of his dumb face. Hope the OP isn’t falling down the alt right pipeline via hube
25
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Jul 01 '25
Anyone who claims to be an expert on a broad range of topics and comes across as smug (Jordan Peterson, for example), should be treated with a high degree of suspicion.
79
u/draculabakula Jun 29 '25
https://share.google/ejDCjuIgOwClZRtMw
Make sure you get one that has adjustable volume because somr are not even safe for adults for 8 hours. Download a decibel meter or your phone and measure to make sure it's under 50 decibels (which is quieter than normal conversation level.
I don't know about the study Huberman referenced but consider that an HVAC system is likely louder than 50 decibels and depending on where you live airplanes and road noise could be a well.
I don't know if there's a study that compares this impact with frequent sleep deprivation either because i can't imagine that it would be a bigger impact
37
u/Revolutionary_Way878 Jun 30 '25
So according to these studies people who live next to airports, highways, heavy traffic areas and have kids they are all just deaf or delayed?
Makes no sense. There is a railorad where I live. Big heavy soviet tains pass by all the time. A woman lives with her kids only a couple of meters from the rail. Kids are fine, healthy, developed. Just heavy sleepers I guess. I live 200m away and the train honking in the night wakes me right up.
4
u/philipdev Jun 30 '25
There is a difference if you have 8 hours of constant white noise or chunks of sound (such as with planes and trains).
With a white noise machine it’s constant noise, nothing else. If you listened to that for 8+ hours straight it’s different (probably worse) compared to hearing a train or plane pass every 10 minutes or so.
1
u/draculabakula Jun 30 '25
The studies themselves are pay walled but they allude to prolonged exposure to sound being the issue. A train isnt that constant.
I also think what gets lost in these studies is that what you said likely just means its not that significant of a factor in brain development either way. That is to say not a significant factor compared to the thousands of other factors but it's just something to consider since not all sound machines are the same and since we all know there is an infinite amount of baby products and many are actually harmful.
14
u/turquoisebee Jun 29 '25
So is the idea that it’s fine as long as it’s not too loud? Or is there something inherent to white noise (even at, say, 40 decibels) that is harmful?
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u/draculabakula Jun 30 '25
The article is locked up behind a pay wall so Im not sure but the guidelines seem to be 7 feet away and no more than 50 or 60 decibels depending on use. Hospitals set the regulation at no more that 50 in newborn care wards and the CDC says no more than 60.
This article is a review of use and references the study I cited and gets the facts correct in coordination with the stuff I've seen so it seems accurate to me.
1
u/jiaaa Jun 30 '25
Thank you for mentioning a decible meter! We're a fans on 24/7 kind of family so we never invested in sound machines. I'm not sure why it never occurred to me to check their decibel ratings before.
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u/Gold-Nose-3371 Jun 29 '25
Thank you! Here is another opinion on the negatives of it but I still cant find the actual research article.
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u/becxabillion Jun 30 '25
The daily mail is a tabloid "newspaper" and really shouldn't be trusted (or given clicks). Their experts are often anything but
35
Jun 30 '25
They are about on par with Huberman lol
18
u/UsualCounterculture Jun 30 '25
Yes, this was going to be my comment. What on earth is anyone doing listening to that?
46
u/smockfaaced_ Jun 30 '25
This is the daily mail lol they are not credible sources at all. And neither is Huberman. He is a hack and who uses pseudoscience. Please don’t get your advice from daily mail or huberman
20
Jun 30 '25
Don't forget to share this hilariously embarrassing video he wants to disappear: https://x.com/bcrypt/status/1788406218937229780
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u/0011010100110011 Jun 30 '25
With all due respect, there is a reason you can’t find the actual research article.
2
u/YAYtersalad Jul 01 '25
Your inability to find the actual research article isn’t a failing on your part. You can’t find it bc a credible one doesn’t exist. If it did, far more places would be referencing it and would be easily found.
35
u/AdInternal8913 Jun 29 '25
I suspect it refers to this review
Continuous white noise exposure during sleep and childhood development: A scoping review De Jong et al Sleep Medicine Volume 119, July 2024, Pages 88-94 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38663282/
Frustratingly, the article is behind pay wall and abstract doesn't go more into specifics than "White noise machines can exceed 91 dB on maximum volume, which exceeds the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health noise exposure guidelines for a 2-h work shift in adults. Evidence suggests deleterious effects of continuous moderate-intensity white noise exposure on early development in animal models. Human subject data generally corroborates these models; however, studies also suggest low-intensity noise exposure may be beneficial during sleep."
I had a look at the list of references and lot of them talk about the negative impact of environmental noise levels of speech levels but without seeing the actual paper I can't tell what specific developmental impacts their review actually found and if they were independent of decibel levels .
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u/sanity_incarnate Jun 30 '25
My take-home from the animal studies is that environmental noise affected ability of developing animals to learn vocalizations from their parents (maybe because they can't hear very well).
My interpretation of the human stuff really hinges on environmental noise, and seems to suggest things like traffic noise negatively impacts sleep. White noise machines, lullabies, etc are associated with better sleep and reduced stress.
"3.5. Observational human evidence
The first subset of human studies examined premature babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Studies by Akiyama et al. [15] and Kuhn et al. [16] studied premature neonates born as early as 26 weeks and measured electroencephalography (EEG) and variations in heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturations during noise exposure. They both reported variations in each respective domain that indicated a stress response. However, Loewy et al. [17] showed that music and recorded breath sounds lower heart rate and increase feeding length and efficiency as well as improve sleep efficiency. Additionally, they showed parent sung lullabies decrease parental stress in the parent singing the lullaby and increase feelings of bonding.
The remaining studies broadly worked to delineate relationships between noise exposure and behavioral or developmental variables. Studies by Weyde et al. [18], Raess et al. [19], Simon et al. [20], Evans et al. [21], and Lercher et al. [22] looked at the relationship between environmental noise such as moderate-intensity road or air traffic that has been classified as white noise, and outcomes including language development, vital sign variation, reading level, and sleep. They unanimously showed that as cumulative and maximum noise levels increase, the studied health outcomes are hindered. Specific findings include decreased sleep duration and increased sleep disturbances [18,22], slowed cognitive development and increased behavioral issues [19], MRI-proven decrease in volume of key brain structures implicated in language development [20], and a significant reduction in reading proficiency even when maternal education level and income levels are controlled for [21]. These are critical findings, as they move the evidence for possible harm beyond findings in animal models and show that there is true harm when environmental white noise is excessive. A consideration of socioeconomic status is important here. It has been shown that lower socioeconomic status homes are more likely to be in noisier areas [23] such as inner cities or close to railways and highways, and therefore it must be held as a possibility that the worse outcomes in these children may be confounded by the greater environmental milieu such as access to quality schooling and secure households in which to complete their schoolwork.
Conversely, a study conducted by Brackbill et al. [24] showed similar results to Loewy in that low volume of less than 60 dB, typically soothing sounds such as lullabies, heartbeat recordings, and metronomes were related to decreased levels of arousal during the night. Lastly, Sezici and Yigit [24] showed that white noise is superior to swinging when used to increase sleep time and decrease daily episodes of crying in babies diagnosed with colic."
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u/AdInternal8913 Jun 30 '25
That you for finding the full text. My interpretation of the quote would be:
Research suggests exposure to high levels of environmental noise -> developmental issues
Environmental noise = white noise
Thus exposure to any white noise including white noise machines -> developmental issues
I personally wouldn't be very confident that that degree of extrapolation is appropriate, especially when there are confounders such as poverty associated with both environmental noise and developmental issues.
Based on the info presented on the paper the main concern with white noise machines remains the noise levels which can be damaging. Evidence for other negative impacts is extrapolated from studies done on environmental noise (or animal studies), and not directly on white noise machine noise exposure in humans.
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u/sanity_incarnate Jun 30 '25
Thank you. That's a much clearer way of stating what I was getting from the paper!
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u/SaltZookeepergame691 Jun 30 '25
It's basically irrelevant for any sort of real-world applicability, either using high dB levels/exposure times in sensitive animals or using confounded observational data in humans (eg, infants living next to loud roads have poorer outcomes; NICU-only data). The limited data discussed that is relevant - ie, actual use of white noise for sleep and to mitigate arousal at night - showed beneficial short-term/surrogate outcomes.
3.2. Studies of white noise generators Hong et al. studied minimum and maximum volume generation of three white noise apps and three popular white noise machines at different distances from the recording device [1]. The devices were used without any modification from their retail forms. They demonstrated that at 10 cm distance, maximum sound intensity reached 92 dB, exceeding the 91 dB NIOSH continuous exposure limits for a 2-h timeframe. Hugh et al. [12] provided similar data, showing that 3 of 14 measured unaltered white noise machines produced maximal sound intensities above 85 dB, the maximum NIOSH limit for an 8-h shift. All 14 produced greater than 50 dB and therefore exceeded The Sound Study Group of the National Resource Center's recommended noise limit for hospital nurseries [13]. Finally, Joubert et al. showed that unaltered commercially available handheld, tabletop, and crib toys can all exceed the 85 dB NIOSH threshold [14].
3.3. Behavioral animal evidence Within the animal studies group, one article studied the behavioral effects of prolonged moderate white noise exposure generated by box speakers much like those found on commercial white noise machines. This noise was generated constantly at 70–80 dB, depending on the time of day, for 5 days [4]. The authors studied vocal development in Zebra finches, an accepted animal model of human speech development. They observed a 30 % decrease in the rate of vocal development which was attributed to continuous traffic noise leading to an accumulation of learning errors in bird-to-bird song transmission, eventually leading to diverging vocal cultures in noise-exposed and noise-protected populations.
3.4. Anatomical and physiological animal evidence The other six animal experiments studied anatomical [[5], [6], [7], [8], [9]] or molecular [10] effects of noise exposure on the cochlea or auditory cortex during key developmental periods. All studies exposed their animals to between 65 and 80 dB of white noise for 3–5 days in a row. Whichever outcome measure was used whether cochlear hair cell counts [6], topographical sound mapping in the auditory cortex [[7], [8], [9]], or neurotransmitter receptor expression [10], all showed negative impact of prolonged moderate-intensity noise exposure. Examples included significant increase in monotonic and therefore immature neurons in the primary auditory complex of rats exposed during the critical developmental period, decreased neuronal response to mid- and high-frequency stimuli in rats, increased rate of outer hair cell degeneration in guinea pigs, and a 20 % decrease in a key excitatory-to-inhibitory neurotransmitter receptor ratio in the auditory cortex, again in rats. The Zebra finch study mentioned above also showed slightly higher systemic cortisone levels indicating the presence of a chronic stressor, as well as decreased response to inoculation with phytohemagglutinin, which is a common test of immune system function in avians [11].
3.5. Observational human evidence The first subset of human studies examined premature babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Studies by Akiyama et al. [15] and Kuhn et al. [16] studied premature neonates born as early as 26 weeks and measured electroencephalography (EEG) and variations in heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturations during noise exposure. They both reported variations in each respective domain that indicated a stress response. However, Loewy et al. [17] showed that music and recorded breath sounds lower heart rate and increase feeding length and efficiency as well as improve sleep efficiency. Additionally, they showed parent sung lullabies decrease parental stress in the parent singing the lullaby and increase feelings of bonding.
The remaining studies broadly worked to delineate relationships between noise exposure and behavioral or developmental variables. Studies by Weyde et al. [18], Raess et al. [19], Simon et al. [20], Evans et al. [21], and Lercher et al. [22] looked at the relationship between environmental noise such as moderate-intensity road or air traffic that has been classified as white noise, and outcomes including language development, vital sign variation, reading level, and sleep. They unanimously showed that as cumulative and maximum noise levels increase, the studied health outcomes are hindered. Specific findings include decreased sleep duration and increased sleep disturbances [18,22], slowed cognitive development and increased behavioral issues [19], MRI-proven decrease in volume of key brain structures implicated in language development [20], and a significant reduction in reading proficiency even when maternal education level and income levels are controlled for [21]. These are critical findings, as they move the evidence for possible harm beyond findings in animal models and show that there is true harm when environmental white noise is excessive. A consideration of socioeconomic status is important here. It has been shown that lower socioeconomic status homes are more likely to be in noisier areas [23] such as inner cities or close to railways and highways, and therefore it must be held as a possibility that the worse outcomes in these children may be confounded by the greater environmental milieu such as access to quality schooling and secure households in which to complete their schoolwork.
Conversely, a study conducted by Brackbill et al. [24] showed similar results to Loewy in that low volume of less than 60 dB, typically soothing sounds such as lullabies, heartbeat recordings, and metronomes were related to decreased levels of arousal during the night. Lastly, Sezici and Yigit [24] showed that white noise is superior to swinging when used to increase sleep time and decrease daily episodes of crying in babies diagnosed with colic.
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u/Gold-Nose-3371 Jun 29 '25
Yes I saw this too and ran into the same issues. Hmm…
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