​Our days are filled with noise. 
 
Talking. Television. Traffic. Alarms. Phones. Texts. Music. Sirens. Barking dogs. Loud noise. Background noise. We are so accustomed to noise that some of us even need the whir of a fan or a white noise machine to help us sleep.
 
Noise is all around us, all the time. So much so that when its truly quiet, it is almost unnerving.
 
There’s been much research around how loud noises are harmful to hearing as well as how noise serves to disrupt focus and productivity, decrease our ability to solve problems, and results in reduced recall in both adults and children.
 
But there are also studies that indicate just how vital silence is to our brains.

Neuroscience is the study of nervous system, including the brain. This research looks closely at behavior and learning.

Alex Korb, a neuroscientist at UCLA, offered four key insights that will boost happiness, all based on his scientific research.


1. Ask, “What am I grateful for?”
Gratitude has been shown to increase our brain’s dopamine and serotonin levels, affecting it at a biological level. Dopamine is commonly associated with pleasure while serotonin affects mood and social behavior. The more we have coursing through our bodies, the better our appetite, memory, gregariousness and sleep.

The most important thing is to ask the question and consider possibilities, even if we don’t arrive at an answer. This helps our brain produce these two positive chemicals, making us feel happier. By searching for things to appreciate, we also enhance our emotional intelligence, enabling us to discover things to appreciate over time.

In late 2015, PayScale released a report about the pay gap between men and women. The findings, gathered from it's website where people log on and  share salary information to make comparisons, revealed that women in the United States make 74 cents to every dollar earned by men. The US Government statistics state that women make 79 cents to the dollar. When experience, job type and college degree are considered, the gap narrows to 97 cents for every dollar earned by male counterparts. But, this still equates to a 2.7% disparity in favor of men.

Women begin their careers earning less than men and find their salaries plateaus much sooner, which results in a significantly reduced lifetime earning potential.

This begs the question: How else does the pay gap affect women?

An academic study conducted by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health explored whether the pay gap has an effect on a woman's mental health.

Researchers analyzed information culled from 22,581 working adults between the ages of 30 and 65. Using an American Psychiatric Association "diagnostic interview", they determined the prevalence of either major depressive disorder (MDD) or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in each of the participants. Then, they paired men and women based on wage-related factors including occupation, industry and age.

In pairs where women made less money than they male counterparts, the odds of women experiencing MDD was twice as high as the men. When women made the same or more than men, MDD was "non-significant."

The instance of GAD was four times higher among women who made less money than men while the occurrence of generalized anxiety disorder was significantly minimized when they made as much or more than their male colleagues.

Based on this research, the pay gap contributes much more than  financial distress. It also has a major impact on a woman's mental health and wellbeing.

As Katherine Keyes, one of the study's authors stated:

“While it is commonly believed that gender differences in depression and anxiety are biologically rooted, these results suggest that such differences are much more socially constructed than previously thought, indicating that gender disparities in psychiatric disorders are malleable and arise from unfair treatment.”

Article excerpt from January 2016 Huffington Post.