However, the science behind this phenomenon goes back to the nineteenth century, when a German professor of physics, Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, discovered binaural beats (Oster, 1973). I will admit that I initially had a hard time believing in binaural beats. While binaural beats have not changed the physical symptoms experienced by people with Parkinson’s disease, it appears that exposure to binaural beats can make their brains start to fire more like neurotypical brains do (Galvez et al., 2018). Interestingly, binaural beats have even been used to help people with Parkinson’s disease. In this example, the authors suggested that the binaural beats they used increased the beta waves present in the brain, which helped participants more effectively cope with the demands of the tasks they were doing. Still another study found that listening to binaural beats lessened the increase in confusion and fatigue experienced by individuals doing thirty minutes of complex cognitive tasks (Lane et al., 1998). Binaural beats can also induce more cognitive flexibility (Hommel et al., 2016), more sustained attention, and improved performance on memory tasks (Basu & Banerjee, 2022). For example, one study found that people who listened to binaural beats for fifteen minutes experienced less mind wandering afterward than people who did not listen to the beats (Kirk et al., 2019). There are now dozens of studies indicating that listening to binaural beats can improve one’s focus (Basu & Banerjee, 2022). Since certain frequencies of brain waves are associated with certain states of mind and emotions, listening to binaural beats may cause our brains to shift toward those states of mind and emotions. Entrainment is the process of your brain waves changing to align themselves with the binaural frequency to which your brain is being exposed. Scientists use the word entrainment to describe how this happens. These waves, being the same frequency as some of the brain waves already happening in your head, can influence how you think and feel (Goodin et al., 2012). To use our example, hearing tones at 300 Hz and 310 Hz will generate waves with a frequency of 10 Hz. When two tones that are close in frequency are presented simultaneously to you, as happens with binaural beats, then waves of a certain frequency – the distance in frequency between the two tones, to be exact – are generated. So how does this affect your brain? There are brain waves of varying frequencies occurring in your brain at all times. At the same time, your brain will perceive this single sound as moving back and forth in the range between 300 Hz and 310 Hz. This processing pattern in your brain is referred to as binaural integration (Garcia-Argibay et al., 2019). If those tones are at 300 Hz and 310 Hz, your brain will integrate the two sounds so that you hear a single sound that is at 305 Hz (Lentz et al., 2014). For example, you might put on headphones and have two tones that are 10 Hertz (the measure of frequency, abbreviated as Hz) apart broadcast to you, with each tone being delivered to just one ear. This article will answer those questions and more for you.īefore reading on, if you're a therapist, coach, or wellness entrepreneur, be sure to grab our free Wellness Business Growth eBook to get expert tips and free resources that will help you grow your business exponentially.īinaural beats are what happens when two equally loud sounds, at just slightly different frequencies (or tones), are presented at the same time, one sound to each ear (Goodin et al., 2012). Maybe you have heard about binaural beats, but you’re not sure what they are, how they might help, and if there is really evidence that they do help. What is it about music, then, that makes it an effective psychological intervention? What about listening to music promotes wellness? One form of exposure to sound for which there is clearly evidence of effects is the phenomenon called binaural beats. In a large review of all the research that followed this initial finding – because plenty of scientists were skeptical that the effect was real – Pietschnig and colleagues (2010) found that there might be a positive effect of listening to music on our overall functioning, but that Mozart himself probably wasn’t the secret ingredient.
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