And the binaural beat goes on ...

Now, here's a strange topic.

The brain seems to have a mind of its own. Check this out:

In October 1973, Dr. Gerald Oster, Mount Sinai Medical Center, N.Y., published a paper in Scientific American about research he had been doing since the 1950s into the effects of sound waves on brainwave patterns.

His paper described a method, using precise sound waves, that allowed a person to create any desired electrical pattern in the brain, including the patterns of meditation.    

Oster found that a new sound is formed in the brain as it reconciles sounds of slightly different frequencies. He put headphones on his subjects and had a slightly different tone entering each ear. He found that after the brain hears these two separate tones, a part of the brain called the olivary nucleus generates a single consistent beat pattern that is a reconciliation of the two tonesThis is called a binaural beat; "bi" meaning "two," "aural," having to do with hearing, and "beat" the resulting perceived pattern. 

 When the brain "syncs up" with the resulting binaural beat, it's called brainwave entrainment. In other words, as the brain perceives the new pattern it's formed as a result of reconciling the two differing tones, one in each ear, it "entrains" to the new pattern and creates brain waves of the same frequency.

Like tuning a violin or guitar

When you hear someone tuning a string instrument, you can hear the flutter or wobble of the tones as two strings are sounded together and the player alters the length of one string to get its frequency to match that of the other. When that flutter is fast, the two tones are farther apart; as player raises or lowers the tone of one string, the flutter becomes slower, and the two tones get closer in frequency to one another, eventually matching. That's how the player knows he or she is in tune! 

 We noted on a previous page that Alpha brain waves vibrate at 8 to 12.9 cycles per second, Theta from 4 to 7.9 cps, and Delta from .1 to 3.9 cps.

So if a person listens to two different tones, and their difference in frequency is, say, 10 cps, the binaural beat created by the brain is 10 cps. The brain then wants to sync up with (or entrain to) that beat if it hears it for any length of time; and when that happens, that person will be in an Alpha brainwave pattern, or Alpha state, resulting in his or her concentration being heightened than if he or she were in a predominantly Beta state and a feeling of greater relaxation ensuing.

And if we get the binaural beat to be, say, 3 cps, then the brain will become entrained to a Delta brainwave pattern, or the pattern of deep meditation, and according to Carl Jung, a sense of oneness with humanity.

Pretty heady stuff!  

Obviously, if true, and research shows that it is, brainwave entrainment can be useful for studying, concentrating, meditating, relaxing, reducing stress and promoting creativity.  

Binaural beats have become synonymous with brainwave entrainment. But there are many other kinds of beats, or pulses, that the brain can sync up to, and we'll talk about them next.