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Binaural Beats – Music for the Mind

Binaural beats is something that I have been interested in for a number of years. They are a safe and scientifically proven way to manipulate brain waves. This page is my attempt at a brief explanation of what a binaural beat is. I’m not an expert in neuroscience and I don’t understand this phenomenon in depth. The information presented below represents the answers that made the most sense to me and helped me understand more about this subject. I’ve gathered it from various sources on the internet and have placed it here for reference.

What is a Binaural Beat?

binauralBeats1

A binaural beat is an effect that happens inside a persons brain when they are listening to two sounds of slightly different frequency in opposite ears though a stereo headphone. When the brain receives these two tones it combines them to generates a third tone. This third tone is the result of combining the two tones with each other. For example, if a person was listening to a 305 Hz sound in the left ear and a 295 Hz sound in the right ear. The brain combines these two tones to create a third 10 Hz tone. This resulting 10Hz tone inside the brain is the binaural beat.

What is the purpose of binaural beats?

As I mentioned above the the purpose of the binaural beat is to coax the brain into changing its current brain-wave frequency to that of the binaural beat. This process is also called entrainment, brain-wave synchronization or frequency following. This happens naturally in our brains because of its tendency to fall into step with outside stimulus that are within the brains natural operating frequencies.

waveProgression

Why would you want to engage in this?

A persons brain-wave activity reflects their state of mind and body. To coax your brain-waves into a different pattern is to give a person the ability to manipulate and control the state of their mind and body.

What are these different states of mind?

The human brain has five ranges of brain-waves. While your brain-wave frequency for relaxation or dreaming might be slightly different then your neighbours, generally speaking they break down like this;

brainwaveStates

If you are interested in playing around with binaural beats check out my web audio generator below.

See the Pen web audio by deadlygeek (@deadlygeek) on CodePen.