Contributors to Neighbour Noise Annoyance.

Noise from neighbours has been shown to be one of the most noise annoying sources in Germany, but research on the influencing factors for the annoyance ratings is scarce. Therefore, we investigated whether different personal and contextual (social, physical) factors contribute to neighbour noise annoyance to better understand the neighbour noise annoyance situation. A population-representative survey in four areas in Germany was conducted, with each area further stratified according to their density of agglomeration (inner city, urban outskirt, rural area).

Music Makes the World Go Round: The Impact of Musical Training on Non-musical Cognitive Functions-A Review.

Musical training is becoming increasingly popular as a topic for scientific research. Here we review the available studies investigating whether and to which degree musical experience generalizes to cognitive functions unrelated to music abilities in healthy humans. In general, it seems that musical training is associated with enhancing effects, even if sometimes only restricted to the auditory domain, on various cognitive functions spanning from executive control to creativity.