Masking effects on subjective annoyance to aircraft flyover noise: An fMRI study

Sound masking, a new noise control technology, has been applied to improve subjective perception of noise in recent years. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this technology are still unclear. In this study, 18 healthy subjects were recurited to take subjective annoyance assessments and fMRI scanning with the aircraft noise and the masked aircraft noise. The results showed that the noise annoyance was associated with deficient functional connectivity between anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and prefrontal cortex and exceeded brain activation in ACC, which might be explained as compensation. The sound masking led to significantly strong activation in the left medial frontal cortex and right medial orbital frontal cortex, which were associated with happy emotion induced by sound masking. This study offered new insights on the underlying neural mechanisms of sound masking effects.