Does anyone know if the science/art/whatever(?) of binaural beats is proven or anecdotally consistent?
I came across this post on Metafilter, linking to this software - sBaGen. At first glance, it seems plausible, but there’s a lot of this New-Agey stuff out there.
My Google results are littered with personal webpages with glowing praises, with very few critical reviews. A search of the Yahoo group associated with BWGen, presents similar results.
This paper in American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis has mixed results.
I’m particularly interested in firsthand experiences by Dopers, but trusted secondhand experiences are also welcome.
The biggest problem with attempting to entrain brainwaves is that you need the initial frequency of the entrainer to be the same as or very close to your own. If you’re predominant frontal lobe activity is beta then you can play a theta range frequency until doomsday and never lower your frequency a tick. The entrainer can only be a “guide” so to speak; it can lead you somewhere if it’s close, but you can’t find it on your own. Preprogrammed recordings can’t adjust themselves to you.
I have an EEG machine at home and had someone write me a program that would use the output from the EEG to create a “leading” binaural beat that was close to my own current brainwave frequency. I would input a target frequency and my own brainwaves would be telling the binaural beat generator where I was and where I wanted to go. It’s a world of difference. It’s also expensive and a pain in the ass.
KidCharlemagne, do you mean it is expensive because it requires an EEG machine? Or that it was expensive to get the program written? Or something else entirely?
I’m intrigued … but I think I’ll still keep working on my transcranial magnetic stimulator just in case this doesn’t work out.
You say “a world of difference”. What does it help you do (in the various modes: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, theta)?
The software I have, can generate tailormade beats, so that’s not a problem. I can choose the median frequency (say, 200 Hz) and the beats (say, 4.9) and the L-R phase(say, L+) to yield L - 197.55, R - 202.45 Hz. I can also add noise and mix it with music (mp3s…etc). I can tailor it to get beta 14 Hz to theta 5 Hz, gradually within 23 minutes. In short, flexibility is not an issue. I played around with the program and it’s a cool toy.
Of course, I can’t get my EEG output. Is there an intuitive way to feel it out? Like listen to 16 Hz for a minute, and then 7 Hz, and see which feels more immediately comfortable.
Well the EEG machine was $2500. I bought that because I wanted to screw around with neurofeedback. It’s quite amazing actually. Someone had written a program to do the binaural beat leading that used to work with an older version of the software and I just had a friend touch it up. The real pain in the ass is putting on the electrodes everytime. I finally got this saline helmet thing but it was still just a pain in the ass. Eventually I lost interest and I now have $3000 worth of shit under my bed.
Basically you’re trying to get your brainwaves to resonate sympathetically with whatever frequency you’re trying to achieve. In order to do that you have to “stimulate” your brain with frequencies that are close to it’s current frequency and “lead” it over time to a new frequency. The EEG would send the program my current numbers and produce a beat of the same frequency. The software would then attempt to lower the frequency and see if I responded, if it didn’t, it would stay where it was, If it did, it would attempt to move lower. So the binaural beat was never far from my actual brainwaves. It was really cool to hear the beat slow down as you actually relaxed rather than just from the passage of time.
I’ve seen and toyed around with those light and sound boxes and they usually have preset programs, but they aren’t moving through the program with any reference to your own state. The obvious thing to do is start all programs at high beta you still may not be in synch with the beat at some point.
After having experienced all this stuff for years I can unequivocally say from a cost/benefit perspective, that zen meditation is the best thing out there.
