Sensory Stimulation: Predictable vs. Random

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I apologize in advance for the circular thought processes. I couldn't tease these out any better.

Auditory and tactile overstimulation are by far the most burdensome, but they are both (relatively) avoidable.

Visual overstimulation is still a problem for me, but is considerably less controllable (at least, in my current circumstances).

I have been operating under the assumption that predictable stimuli is what calms me the most. I have sought to make my surroundings predictable. Visually, that means a lot of straight lines and repeating patterns with a modern, "clean" feel.

The song, "Weightless", by Marconi Union was developed with help of scientists with the intent of producing an extremely relaxing song (and they seem to have succeeded).

Popular article: http://dailyhealthpost.com/according-to ... ecorded/2/

If it works for music, will it work for visual elements as well?

Nature appears more visually random than my living room. Many people say being in nature is calming. Is it because the brain is allowed to stop looking for patterns?

That's a really interesting idea. I wonder if there is some relationship with pattern and meaning. That is to say, I wonder if we always attribute some meaning to a pattern, so when we see, or hear, a pattern, our brain automatically tries to figure out what the pattern means. I could imagine that this could be really taxing for the brain to try and do all the time.

But then again, nature is full of patterns, we just have to look a little closer to see them. But maybe since the patterns aren't readily apparent, it is still relaxing because are brain isn't seeing the patterns?

yes, our brain does that.
about nature not having a pattern, actually the patterns are in our mind. Many times we figure out patterns that don't exist, even like crazy conspiracy theories. To give an example, the random music sorting of Ipod had some songs from the same artist one after the other sometimes because it was random. Clients started to think the sorting was not random because of that. So they had to make it less random to appear more random maybe they did it to the song too.