A similar process happens when we listen to music, drumming, or chanting and explains why some music can be so powerful in affecting how we feel.īinaural soundtracks only work to entrain brainwaves if the two auditory tones produce a beat in the range of human brainwave frequencies, which in most cases is between 0.5 and 30 Hz.įor example, if your left ear hears a tone with a frequency of 300 Hz and your right ear hears a tone of 314 Hz, your mind will perceive a beat of the difference between these two numbers, a pulsing tone of 14 Hz. This pulsing tone then causes your brain waves to synchronize with the frequency of the perceived, illusory sound in a process known as frequency following response. The binaural pulse is actually a mental illusion and state of mind and not a real auditory sound being heard by your ears. When you put on a set of headphones and listen to a binaural beat soundtrack, the two separate tones delivered to your ears become one beat frequency inside the auditory center in your mid-brain, resulting in a third, pulsing tone which is the actual binaural beat. Hz is merely an abbreviation for the word hertz, a unit of measurement of electrical vibration measured in oscillations per second. These separate tones are known as the carrier frequencies or carrier tones.įor the binaural tone to be perceived in the mind, the carrier tones must be of the same amplitude and differ from one another by approximately 40 Hz or less in frequency. This research continues to this day.īinaural literally means “two ears,” and this refers to the fact that binaural pulses involve separate tones heard by each ear. Oster published his findings in a paper in the science journal Scientific American, leading to an avalanche of further research and discoveries on the neuroscience of how listening to binaural tones can affect the mind, mood, and behavior of human beings. Oster explored the nature and uses of binaural sounds, discovering that when the difference in frequency between the two tones is in the range of human brain waves, the listener’s brain waves synchronize with this frequency in a process known as brain wave entrainment. In 1973, an American psychology researcher named Gerald Oster rekindled Dove’s discovery and took it to the next level. This phenomenon was first discovered in 1839 by a German scientist named Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, although the uses and benefits of Dove’s discovery remained unappreciated until the 1970s. Binaural beat technology allows the listener to achieve a specific, desired state of mind and a desired mental or physiological effect. Our meta-analysis adds to the growing evidence that binaural-beat exposure is an effective way to affect cognition over and above reducing anxiety levels and the perception of pain without prior training, and that the direction and the magnitude of the effect depends upon the frequency used, time under exposure, and the moment in which the exposure takes place.A binaural beat is a pulsing sound perceived in the mind when each ear hears a separate tone of two slightly differing frequencies. Time under exposure contributed significantly to the model indicating that longer periods are advisable to ensure maximum effectiveness. Moreover, the findings suggest that binaural-beat exposure before, and before and during the task produces superior results than exposure during the task. Meta-regression results indicated that it does not seem to be necessary to mask binaural beats with white noise or pink noise in terms of effectiveness, obtaining similar effects with unmasked binaural beats. The results, based on 35 effect sizes, showed an overall medium, significant, consistent effect size (g = 0.45). Twenty-two studies met our inclusion criteria for this meta-analysis. The objective of this meta-analysis was to study the effect of binaural beats on memory, attention, anxiety, and analgesia. It has been suggested that binaural beats can influence cognition and mental states among others. Binaural auditory beats are a perceptual phenomenon that occurs when presenting separately to each ear two tones that slightly differ in their frequency.
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