Binaural beats are an interesting tool: they directly affect your brainwaves and they can alter your mood, behavior and even your consciousness. This is accomplished by inducing brainwave patterns through the use of stereo sound.

Binaural beats are the byproduct of how your brain perceives the nuances of stereo phasing: slightly different tones are played into each ear and your brain perceives the difference of the tones as a beat frequency. Clearly, the stereo directionality of the binaural beat carrier frequencies is important.

Let’s say that we play a 220 Hz carrier tone into the left ear and a 226.5 Hz carrier tone into the right ear. While processing the audio stimulus, the superior olivary nucleus portion of each hemisphere of the brain will also perceive a 6.5 Hz beat frequency, a frequency associated with the frontal midline theta rhythm.

Obviously, headphones make easy work of the stereo requirements of the binaural beat carrier frequencies. The left channel is fed directly into the left ear, the right channel is fed directly into the right ear, and your brain does the rest of the work. (It is perhaps worth mentioning that it is possible to effectively listen to binaural beats on speakers, but to get the best results, great care should be taken in the positioning of the speakers relative to your head.)

Binaural beats, headphones and earbuds | Higher-Music.com.

Here’s his well written summary of a recent study:

Study author Ulman Lindenberger of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and his co-investigators looked at electrical activity in the brains of eight pairs of guitarists. They monitored patterns of brain waves as the musicians played a short jazz-fusion melody together up to 60 times, and published their findings in the journal BMC Neuroscience.

The study reported that the frontal and central regions of the guitarists’ brains synchronized to a high degree. But, more surprisingly, the temporal and parietal regions also showed significant synchronization in more than half of the pairs. These regions may be involved in simply enjoying the music, researchers suggested.

via Music Therapy: Brain Wave Entrainment.

Brainwave entrainment is the use of some external stimulus, usually different sounds that a person will hear with stereo headphones, to induce a certain level of brain wave activity. When a person’s brainwave activity is artificially altered by these means, it will subtly shift their awareness and perception.

Using binaural beats is a common and effective method of brainwave entrainment. In order for the binaural beats to be effective, a person must be using stereo headphones so that they can hear a different sound in each ear.

Most of the time, the binaural beats will be embedded underneath the layers of tracks on a song, usually soothing ambient music or soundscapes, so that the person listening can focus on the music and not on the frequencies they are hearing. If you either find or create effective binaural beat audios to listen to in stereo heaphones, the frequencies should blend perfectly into the background, and you should not be able to consciously notice them unless you really try to isolate them.

via Self Improvement And Motivation: Increase Creativity and Redce Stess Using Alpha Meditation.

Music is commonly used to help induce certain states and feelings. Some music can make us feel more aggressive, or completely relaxed, and still other types of music can induce feelings of nostalgia.

We also know that music and exercise has been going hand in hand since long before Jane Fonda’s aerobic videos hit the scene. The right music can help produce energy in the body and in the mind simultaneously. Through actual scientific studies researchers have discovered that the frequencies in some music can actually optimize the flow of energy in the body and brain.

Through their studies researchers have been able to demonstrate how most people live their daily lives in a weakened state and not able reach their full potential as a result of several external reasons. They believed that ov

via Your Music May Be Destroying Your Performance | Guitar Lessons For Beginners.

These incorporate what has been found by scientists and called entrainment which is when different sounds of similar frequencies are sent to each ear. This happens when the brain adjusts to the difference between the two frequencies and attempts to match that different frequency. This is known as a binaural beat and the brain adjusts its wave output to that frequency.

For instance, if the difference in frequencies between the two ears is 15 cycles per second then the brain will match its wave output to that frequency. It has been found that brain waves affect mood, level of relaxation and focus.

via Practical tips to manage and relief your stress.

In general terms brainwave entrainment is the method of using external stimulus, such as binaural beats or isochronic tones, for bringing a persons brainwaves to an intended brainwave level that corresponds with the entrainment used. For example if one is listening to binaural beats that are set at a frequency of 9 hz, then eventually that persons brainwaves will fall into step with that frequency level.

Any practice that aims to cause brainwave frequency to fall into step with a periodic stimulus having a frequency corresponding to the intended brain-state is a form of brainwave entrainment. This is known as “frequency following response” which is actually a natural phenomenon where the brain naturally changes its frequency towards the frequency of a dominant external stimulus.

via Brainwave Entrainment: A New Method Of Meditation? | CarrieSpry.com.

One of the pioneers of accelerated learning, Dr. Georgi Lozanov, determined through his research that music played at 60 beats per minute resulted in the type of brainwave activity needed for learning. Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major K 448, for example, is written in this meter.

Dr. Alfred Tomatis, in his 1991 essay, “Pourquoi Mozart?”, coined the term “Mozart Effect” when he shared his research conclusion that Baroque music, particularly Mozart’s, was written in the perfect meter to stimulate the brainwave activity necessary to accelerate learning.

Additionally, though controversial, research by the University of California, Irvine, also concluded that specific pieces of music composed by Mozart, when played in a controlled learning environment, could enhance the student’s ability to absorb new information quickly, and eve

via masterwordsmith-unplugged: Music.