Can binaural music alter your brainwaves?

To cope up with a stressful and demanding lifestyle, and enhance my creative performance, I recently decided to start daily meditation. I looked on internet for some of the best ways to meditate, and was literally inflamed with curiosity when I came across the term: Binaural Beats!

The concept of binaural beat is quite a recent psychological breakthrough. It has become quite notorious these days for its stimulatory effects on human mind. There have been many allegations about the psycho-stimulatory effect of binaural beats—it can help people memorize and learn, quit smoking, deal with erectile dysfunction, perk up physical performance etc…. It has also been claimed that binaural beats can stimulate the effect of recreational drugs making you feel really high and escalated. Now that sounds interesting, right!

To understand the effect of binaural beats on mind and realize it’s role in producing relaxation states or altered states of consciousness, it’s important to understand two psychophysical terms: Binaural Beats and Brain waves.

What are brain waves?

It’s difficult to comprehend the concept of brainwaves without having a basic knowledge of wave dynamics and neurology, but to put in its simplest form, Brainwaves are the electrical undulations produced during coordinated transmission of electrochemical signals through neurons in brain. They’re measured by a device called electroencephalogram and are not actually waves in the terms of traveling waves in physics. Different types of brain waves as administered during particular mental states are:

Beta waves (Active, busy or anxious thinking and active concentration, arousal, cognition, and or paranoia)

Alpha waves (Relaxation (while awake), pre-sleep and pre-wake drowsiness, REM sleep, Dreams)

Theta waves (Deep meditation/relaxation, NREM sleep)

Delta waves (Deep dreamless sleep, loss of body awareness)

What are binaural beats?

Binaural beats are produced when two coherent sounds of nearly similar frequencies are presented one to each ear with stereo headphones or speakers. The brain integrates the two signals, producing a sensation of a third sound called the binaural beat.For example, if a frequency of 100 Hz is played in one ear and 106 Hz is played in the other ear, a binaural beat of 6 Hz is created by the brain.

The concept behind binaural beats is pretty simple:  If someone receives an auditory stimulus with a frequency in the range of brain waves, the predominant brainwave frequency is said to move towards the frequency of the stimulus. In psychological terms, this process is known as entrainment. For example, if a normal, awake person is subjected to a binaural beat of frequency of around 7 hertz, the beta wave which is predominant in that wakeful state will drift towards the frequency of binaural beat, and thereby get lowered. The lower the brain wave frequency, the more relaxing the mental state.

While the above conceptualization has been scientifically testified and substantiated, there are other contentious assertions of binaural effect. For example, it’s hypothesized that by using particular binaural frequencies, an individual can stimulate certain glands to produce desired hormones. Beta-endorphin has been modulated in studies using alpha-theta brain wave training, and dopamine with binaural beats.(Wikipedia)

Yogis who’ve been into meditation for years are able to produce low frequency brainwaves on their own, but it’s quite difficult for us to do that on our own. This is where binaural beats come into help. They are simply an easy way to get the brain to the low frequency states that are needed to work with the subconscious mind, and produce a relaxation effect whose intensity depends upon how low the brain waves are.

I have heard of some powerful binaural beats that make you feel high but I feel they work different for everyone.