A Quiet Medicine: How Silence Slows Down Your Heart and Grows Neurons

In 2006, Dr. Luciano Bernardi, professor of internal medicine at Italy’s University of Pavia and an enthusiastic amateur musician, designed an experiment to study the effects of music on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems of his participants.

Bernardi randomly ordered six types of music and inserted two-minute “pauses” of silence to bring the subjects back to baseline—a control point for experiments. Yet contrary to his expectations, when the subjects listened to these pauses, they didn’t return to baseline at all—instead, they relaxed.

In fact, they relaxed so much more profoundly during the silent pauses than during even the slowest, most soothing pieces of music that Bernardi had to rethink the whole premise of his experiment.

“The effect was quite remarkable,” Bernardi told The Epoch Times.

He said that the pause (silence) was “much more effective than the music.”

Bernardi’s discovery reframed the role of silence. Although silence is commonly understood as the absence of sound, research now shows that silence is an active force. Different types of silence can have surprising effects on our cardiovascular and cognitive function, and even help our neurons grow.

The Body Listens

In 2006, Bernardi’s study was the most downloaded article in Heart, a peer-reviewed journal of cardiologists. While it might seem intuitive that silence would calm the body, no one had empirically demonstrated it before.

Why does silence have such profound effects? The answer lies in how our bodies respond to sound itself, both good and unwanted.

“Noise can be defined as unwanted sound,” said noise researcher Erica Walker, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health.

When noise travels via sound waves, it enters your eardrum, where it moves the inner ear bones, activating the cochlea, the spiral-shaped structure in the inner ear that stimulates tiny hair cells. These cells then convert vibrations into electrical signals that travel to the brain’s amygdala, releasing stress hormones.

Noise activates the same fight or flight response that you would have if you were harassed while walking down the street, Walker said. “Your body is responding with increased cardiac output. You start to sweat and release all these hormones,” she said.

The hormones include cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. Chronic activation of these hormones can cause damage to the cells lining blood vessels, leading to worsened cardiovascular health and oxidative stress. Walker noted that sounds as low as 40 decibels (ambient noise of a quiet office) can have an adverse effect on health, and up to 65 decibels can lead to stroke, hypertension, and higher mortality.

On the other hand, silence, as demonstrated in Bernardi’s study, lowers heart rate and blood pressure. It’s so much so that silence “may be potentially useful in the management of cardiovascular disease,” Bernardi said.

Illustration by The Epoch Times

Silence may even help with cognitive functioning.

A 2021 study found that those who worked in silence experienced the least cognitive load compared with those exposed to speech or other background noises. The participants working in silence showed the highest accuracy and memory when performing cognitive tasks, and had the lowest levels of annoyance and workload perception. Moreover, silence resulted in significantly lowered cortisol concentrations, indicating less physiological stress. The researchers concluded that reducing noise provides the best environment for cognitive work.

Illustration by The Epoch Times

Listening to Silence

Silence’s benefits can be tangible—it may even help generate your neurons.

Imke Kirste’s lab at Duke University Medical School had another serendipitous encounter with silence. In 2013, she and her team exposed mice to several types of sounds, including distress calls from baby mice, and also to silence. Like Bernardi, she didn’t intend to study silence at all and meant to use it only as a control.

The researchers expected baby mouse cries to spur brain cell growth in adult mice because they signal distress and, hypothetically, would boost the brain’s flexibility. The cries did cause some short-term cell growth. Yet, the surprise came when they found that giving mice two hours of complete silence each day led to the largest growth of new cells in the hippocampus—the brain’s center for memory, emotions, and learning—and importantly, those increases lasted the longest.

Contrary to Bernardi’s observation that silence led to relaxation after stimulus (music), Kirste reasoned that “listening” to silence actually triggered a sort of positive stress response, or “eustress.”

Silence then is not passive, but an active listening process—there’s something active about listening to “nothing.” Kirste hypothesized that the cell growth could be explained as an adaptive response to unexpected quiet, challenging the brain to develop new cells as a way to increase sensitivity or alertness.

Although this study was conducted on mice, it raises exciting possibilities about whether similar effects might occur in humans.

The concept of “active” silence becomes even more intriguing when one considers what happens in the human brain during quiet moments. Robert Zatorre, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University, told The Epoch Times that psychologically, there may not be such a thing as silence.

His research shows that even in the absence of sound, the brain creates “internal representations of sound.” For example, if you are listening to a song, and suddenly it stops, you may still hear it in your head, he said. This ability, as far as we know, is unique to humans, and it’s a form and source of creativity. You can create visual or auditory representations in your mind, which can allow you to plan for the future, or, as a musician, allow you to create entire compositions in your head.

This type of internally generated imagery and sound is associated with the brain’s default mode network (DMN), which is linked to daydreaming, creativity, and self-reflection. This network is most active when the mind is at rest, with research showing that external noise suppresses the DMN. As researchers have put it, the activation of DMN “serves as a hub that integrates internal and external information into a conscious workspace.”

A happy life comes from a silent mind. A 2018 article in the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling suggests that “inner silence” can be a way to lasting happiness rooted in meaning, purpose, and genuine connection. The authors explain that such silence helps people step back from mental noise, see different sides of themselves, and reconnect with what truly matters. Other studies corroborate that mental silence is important in reducing stress and depression.

Perhaps most remarkably, this type of practiced silence actually changes brain structure. A 2020 neuroscience study had participants practice a form of meditation for seven minutes a day, five days a week, over six weeks, with deliberate pauses of complete silence. Brain scans before and after showed a significant increase in white matter integrity in the left uncinate fasciculus, a key pathway that links the brain’s emotional center with areas responsible for reasoning and self-control. This structural change is associated with better emotional regulation and clearer decision-making.

Interestingly, participants reported feeling less “mental quiet” as the training went on, even though their brain scans showed greater connectivity. The researchers suggested that silence, with practice, becomes less of a noticeable event and more of an automatic, stable state of mind.

Strategic Silence

Beyond the physical and brain-building benefits of silence, researchers have discovered that strategic silence can facilitate a change in perspective and enhance future outcomes across multiple domains.

For instance, a 2022 study found that simply pausing for three seconds during a negotiation can boost the total deal by 17 percent. As the authors note, “silence is golden.”

The effect was strongest when pauses lasted between three and 10 seconds, giving both sides space to think, calm emotions, and move from rigid positions to problem-solving. The silent pause disrupts what researchers call the “fixed pie” mindset, where each side sees the other’s gain as their loss, and instead encourages looking for options that benefit both.

The negotiation researchers point to similar findings in other professional settings. Studies that they cite show that teachers who pause three to five seconds between questions get greater engagement and more thoughtful student responses. Therapists similarly report using silence as a tool to help their patients reach deeper expression during sessions.

“Having quiet moments allows you to reflect on things that are important,” Zatorre said.

Finding Quiet Medicine

True silence is rare, if not nonexistent, unless you are in outer space.

“There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot,” wrote musician John Cage, who famously experimented with silence in his music. In one instance, he visited Harvard University’s anechoic chamber, a specialized room without echoes or sound.

Yet Cage could still hear two sounds, “one high and one low,” he wrote. “When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation.”

Cage concluded, “Until I die, there will be sounds.”

Bernardi thus suggests that we reconsider silence as the absence of bad noise.

The key is conscious listening and intention. Zatorre recommended that, apart from silence, people simply sit down and listen to a piece of music from beginning to end. “Try to enjoy it,” he said. “Get as much meaning as you can from it. Don’t just hear it, but actively listen.”

The same can be applied to silence. Rumi, the famous poet and scholar, said: “Listen to the silence. It has much to say.”