Keynote Speaker

Katarina Paunović

Associate Professor
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Medicine
Institute of Hygiene and Medical Ecology
Belgrade, Serbia

Individual differences in human reactions to noise

Many individual factors modulate human reactions to environmental noise, including one’s age, gender, and personality traits. High noise sensitivity plays a pivotal role in the association between noise exposure and annoyance, cardiovascular diseases, sleep disturbances, executive functioning, physical and mental health, cognition, and well-being. Recent scientific research explores the relationship between noise sensitivity and laterality (handedness), self-reported anxiety and depression, and misophonia, an abnormally strong emotional and behavioral reaction to specific provoking sounds. Experimental studies nowadays focus on sophisticated oxidative stress and inflammatory parameters that may account for individual differences in noise-related health effects.