Anyone who’s ever tuned a guitar by harmonics is familiar with this phenomenon. Two slightly out-of-tune tones will produce a wah-wah-wah effect to the ear. Tuning one or the other string to slow and then eliminate this effect will produce perfectly tuned strings.
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, PaulM, we’re glad to have you with us.
When you start a thread, it’s helpful to other readers if you provide a link to the column you’re talking about. Saves search time, and helps keep us all on the same page. In this case, I presume, it was: Can binaural beats improve your mood? - The Straight Dope
You might also find this prior discussion of interest: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=572807&highlight=binaural
No biggie, you’ll know for next time, and, as I say, welcome!
I certainly don’t have the knowledge on this one, but, I do have some anecdotal experiences which add confusion to the entire subject. I do know that if I am in a room with a strong strobe light for more than about 10 minutes, I will begin to get that God-awful aura which comes before a seizure. If I get out fast, I may be okay, but four times, I had seizures. The only real question there is: WHY did I let it happen?
Next, for six years I have been fighting a truly not-so-nice cancer. Two months ago I was told I was in remission. During this time I have had a good number of surgeries and procedures which required me to be put fully under. Before the very first surgery, maybe two days before, I met with my anesthesiologist. He reviewed my history, for there is something that I have which make going under even more dangerous than it would normally be. He also asked all kinds of just fun questions. Somewhere in that discussion, he found that when I was a kid, my parents would play Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby, George Carlin and later, Monty Python. A few days later, I am in the operating room, still about 30 minutes from going under, and in comes the anesthesiologist and he reviews how things will go and all will be fine. And, then I hear it, first very low, as he speaks, but then it comes up in volume as he leaves. It is a very old Bob Newhart record. I was totally laughing, even at the point when they gave me the big dose, so they could put that gross tube down my throat.
All I can say is that the distraction and laughter helped me move to a place of total comfort. Maybe the bin-aural beats would do the same, but get this - my neurologists, two of them, both agree that they can trigger seizures. I have decided that, for me personally, I will find a different manner in which to relax.
On my very first post on TSD, I totally messed up by not putting in the link to the original question, which was: Can binaural beats improve your mood? - The Straight Dope
Please, give this first timer a chance, okay?
Rocklobster7413
Was this thread merged, and thus everything above your first post wasn’t originally there? If not, then I’ll provide clarification: you only need to add a link if one hasn’t been provided already.
Either way, welcome. It takes a lot more than one mistake for people not to like you around here. Heck, it’s rare that people even bother to read the rules even after their first post.
To answer your OP (original post), I’d like to point out that the phenomena of finding music from your past to be comforting is a very different phenomena from binaural beats. And that it makes sense that, if strobe lights cause seizures in you, as binaural beats would, too. The problem is similar with both of them-slow, repetitive pulsation. (Slow as in slow enough to notice.)
Finally, to address the OP (original poster, i.e. PaulM): there is a difference–binaural beats are resolved in the brain itself, not by the wave physically canceling that produces the wah-wah beats you describe. The idea is that the resolution in the brain allows the brain to perceive it as an actual wave, instead of as beats. It’s a way to get around the fact that the ears cannot pick up, say, a 10hz wave, but they can pick up 380hz in one and 370hz in the other.
Incidentally, a lot of hypnosis CDs do this, too, but it seems to me to be more to create confusion, which is supposed to aid in getting suggestions past the conscious mind.