MAYU
love made audible
Helping families nurture their infant, with sound, even when they are apart.
Sound for the Beginning
MAYU is a tool for families to create personalized soundscapes for their infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
It guides families to record their voices — humming, whispering, singing a lullaby, siblings laughing - and familiar sounds around home. The recordings are then woven with nurturing sounds that are developed with experts in music neuroscience, neonatology, and family-centered care, offering a gentle presence for their infants in sound while they cannot be there.
Presence in Sound
Hearing is among the first senses to develop, already shaping the brain in the weeks before a baby is born.
Every year, about 1 in 10 newborns in the United States is admitted to a NICU. While many state-of-the-art facilities are designed to save lives, their sensory environment is often challenging for a developing brain: beeps and alarms — or silence, with voices far away.
Circumstances prevent many families from being physically present in the NICU as much as they wish they could. The separation and a sense of guilt leave many parents carrying symptoms of trauma, even after their baby comes home.
We are developing MAYU to support families in sharing a loving presence in sound, and in nurturing their infant's earliest development.
Last Sound to First Sound
We are Yoko and Avery Sen, co-founders of Sen Sound, a sound design and research studio with a mission to transform the sound experience in hospitals.
Over the last decade, we have dedicated our work to collaborating with hospitals and medical device companies to reduce the negative impact of noise in healthcare — driven by a question Yoko first faced as a patient: what is the last sound we get to hear at the end of our lives? Now we turn our question to: what is the first sound of love that we remember hearing? What is the first sound we want our loved ones to hear?
MAYU operates as a nonprofit initiative under fiscal sponsorship of Social Good Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity, and is supported by grants from Unlikely Collaborators and a team of collaborators and advisors.
Contact
Avery Sen
avery@sensound.space