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Binaural beat benefits

1. Gamma waves (~40 Hz) increase sensory acuity

2. Beta waves (13-40 Hz) help you cognate and remember better

3. Alpha waves (8-13 Hz) help you to relax and decrease anxiety

4. Theta waves (4-8 Hz) help with deep meditation

5. Delta waves (0.5-4 Hz) help you to sleep better

(http://www.edumed.org.br/cursos/neurociencia/MethodsEEGMeasurement.pdf)

Entrainment is achieved usually after 8-10 min (10.3389/fpsyt.2015.00070, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bspc.2018.01.022).

The first definition of “medication” in the American Heritage dictionary is “A drug or other substance used to treat disease or injury; a medicine.” Sound waves are substances. Binaural beats are substances used to treat ADHD, and insomnia, and anxiety. Therefore, binaural beats can be considered a drug. Do not get scared, however, because this drug is has basically no side effects.

“Bi” means two, and “aural” is related to the ears, so binaural means “two eared.” Binaural beats are simply, constant sounds, played in both ears. These rhythmic sounds have different effects depending on the difference of frequency between them, which is measured in Hertz (for example, 240 Hz in one ear and 245Hz in the other ear would give you a 5 Hz, theta binaural beat). In order of highest frequency to lowest frequency, the different types of binaural beats are gamma, beta, alpha, theta, and delta (10.1007/BF00453554).

Interestingly, these frequencies of the beats match very closely with the frequency of certain brain waves. When your ears collect the sound waves from these beats, the brain understands them via different neural pathways. Depending on which pathway, the brain uses to hear the beats, is the precise psychological response that these beats impose on the brain. That is, the brain becomes “locked” into a certain pathway that increases the sensory acuity, cognition, relaxation, meditation, and sleeping ability depending on the beats used (10.3389/fnhum.2013.00786).

GAMMA WAVES

One study, while noting how males and females respond differently to binaural beats, indicates that gamma waves effect cognition differently in different people. The study points out that introverts may be more responsive to the changes in brain waves induced by binaural beats, and certain people may suffer slight attention deficits from gamma binaural beats if their brain is efficient enough already.

So binaural beats might lower my attention abilities? Potentially, yes, but this makes sense since they induce a phenomenon referred to as “binaural integration.” Other names for this phenomenon are entrainment or entrapment. This phenomenon causes your brain waves to match more closely with the waves of the music. Therefore, your inefficient waves – if you have them – can become more efficient, or your efficient brain waves – if you have those – can become less efficient (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1066-8).

A different study from Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found the gamma beats to have a positive impact on “brainstorm-like" creative thinking (especially in those with lower dopamine levels). This type of thinking is also known as divergent thinking which starts with few thoughts and leads to more and creative thoughts. The change in divergent thinking in the study from gamma beats were similar to those caused by alpha wave binaural beats (10.3389/fnhum.2013.00786).

Gamma waves occur in your brain mostly during wakefulness, so it would make sense that if we were trying to increase attention, then gamma waves would benefit that (10.1016/s1364-6613(00)01568-0)! A small study of 40 individuals by the National Journal of Physiology, Pharmacy and Pharmacology indicated that although reaction time was decreased during entrainment with gamma beats, memory scores were increased, although not significantly (10.5455/njppp.2018.8.1246506022018).

A retracted study from Experimental Brain Research stated, “The fact that the effect of gamma-frequency beats was limited to visual feature bindings is consistent with previous research, demonstrating that while visual feature integration is associated with gamma band activity, visuomotor integration relies on beta band activity (Roelfsema et al. 1997).” The data from this study shows also, that gamma beats increased the ability of the subjects to feature bind, which is, “in visual working memory the mechanism that allows us to memorize not only separate visual features, such as colors, shapes, and orientations, but also their specific conjunctions that characterize objects in the visual world, (https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.21.12.7).”

It should be noted, however, that this study was retracted for possible data manipulation (10.1007/s00221-017-4957-9).

BETA WAVES

The research journal named, Psychological Research showed that, “Exposure to beta-frequency binaural beats yielded a greater proportion of correctly recalled words and a higher sensitivity index dʹ in recognition tasks,” in a small study of 32 people. Coherently, with much of the research I have read, these researchers conclude, “These findings indicate that the presentation of binaural auditory beats can affect long-term memory both positively and negatively, depending on the frequency used (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0959-2).”

What is interesting is that a low volume of beta brain waves are usually recorded in those with depression and ADHD. A study completed by Kennerly, R.C. in 2021 showed a statistically significant increase in the average scores of 50 college students in the “word list recall test, the digit symbol subtest, and the digit span subtest.” All of which led the researchers to conclude that “that beta frequency binaural-beat audio signals are an effective method for facilitating simple free recall memory, ability to attend, and the ability to persevere at routine motor tasks," thereby, facilitating ADHD.

Beta waves were shown to make a statistically significant increase in the number of correct responses and decrease the amount of accidentally chosen wrong answers in a series of vigilance tasks on three different days. This study of 29 people played the beta beats for 30min which was the duration of the entire test (0.1016/s0031-9384(97)00436-8).

A study by Brain Sciences is actually confident enough to say that beta binaural beats are a “proven intervention” to reduce mental fatigue (10.3390/brainsci12091161)!

ALPHA WAVES

Alpha beats are my favorite, and I think when you see the evidence, you will understand why I listen to them when I read, write and study.

BioMed Research International found that alpha beats increase the score of the stroop test (a test which is used to measure frontal lobe functionality), increase the IQ of some mentally disabled children, improves attention and general mental ability in healthy elderly people, and speed up reaction time (10.1155/2022/8588272).

In addition, Alpha waves (as well as a 432Hz tone in both ears) statistically significantly (with an incredible p value of <0.001!) helped those with dental anxiety in this study done by Dilek Menziletoglu et al. in the Journal Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology and Buccal Surgery (10.4317/medoral.24051).

THETA WAVES

If you would like to have the benefits of thinking faster, focusing even better in school, or preparing well for a game… Then do not listen to theta waves! They are “associated with states of relaxation, meditation, drowsiness, and decreased alertness and cognitive performance.” So listen to these perhaps right before bed, or during meditation, or during a stressful day (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0959-2).

A Study from Brain Science with 86 participants showed, that a long-term treatment of theta wave binaural beats reduced the amount of beta waves in the brain of patients with insomnia and reduced “the hyper-arousal state and contribute to sleep induction (10.3390/brainsci12030339).”

Another study found that Theta binaural beats “dampen” stress responses after a psychologically stressful event (PMID: 32619206). While another – quite fantastically – found that 4 Hz beats HALVED the amount of morphine a pre-knee replacement surgery group used to reduce morphine consumption. Interestingly, while theta beats decreased morphine intake, it did not decrease pain perception or anxiety measures (PMID: 324129160).

DELTA WAVES

Delta waves are seen in the very deep sleep stage of the sleep cycle. This suggests that you might try to time your playlist right so that you can entrain your brain waves into theta waves as you fall asleep, and delta waves thereafter. Similar to the Theta waves, these will not help with focus, alertness, or other such functions (0.1016/s0031-9384(97)00436-8).

The research Journal Digital Health found that delta beats improved the ability of people to begin sleep, decreased the amount of awakenings during sleep, improved the amount of time for which people sleep, increased sleep quality, and reduced anxiety and anger. It concludes in its study of 20 healthy students, “The findings of this study confirmed that auditory stimulation with a delta binaural beat seems to be a low-cost and alternative method for medicine and other treatment methods with side effects (10.1177/20552076221102243).”

THE SUM UP

While I have presented a good amount of evidence that Binaural beats work very well for many people and different test subjects, there is no way to see if they will work for you other than trying them. I only say it this way because there are no apparent side effects upon or after using them as a performance enhancer, a focus booster, an anxiety reducer, or a sleep advocate, or as whatever else you see fit to use them.

As I have researched this topic, I found that while most of the literature that I read supports the use of these auditory stimulants in various situations, some studies do not show any positive effect of them, such as this one (10.1016/j.pedn.2008.06.010), or this one (10.1523/ENEURO.0232-19.2020), or this one (https://doi.org/10.1080/15390940802234263).

Again, it is worth a shot to see if they work for you but there are other things that commons sense would have you do in addition to binaural beats for a given task. For example, in addition to alpha beats for focus, also put your phone away and sit in a quieter area. Always remember that life must be seen through a systems approach, that is, almost invariably, there is more than one solution to any problem, and many of those solutions work together in order to completely solve said issue.