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I read the wiki but I still don't understand. Can anyone elucidate me?

I think the "high" portion is more placebo than "science".

There is some evidence that we can influence things like hormones, though.

vx8QXF0U4ZQ

You wanna get high, I know it.

Brainwave manip via soundwave resonance?

Hell, I'm still working on 'eigenstates'.

I'll give this a better go later, but:

it seems plausible that some type of "pattern firing" might spread through the brain, creating certain "brainwaves", so that isn't necessarily far fetched (it actually occurs in epilepsy)

however, looking over pubmed, most of the stuff that talks about binaural beats in terms of clinical application come from "alternative medicine" or "nursing" journals, which I would take with a grain of skepticism

I've been reading about those myself. It seems you need to wear headphones. One pitch is played in one ear and another pitch is played in the other ear creating a beat. It is supposed to alter your brain waves to induce such things a peacefulness and other moods. They usually play them in the back ground of music or nature sounds of water, so you really cannot hear them. When I did it like all day, I got really sleepy.

Originally posted by dadudemon
There is some evidence that we can influence things like hormones, though.

no there isn't

even in the anxiety/stress research, nobody has done an actual measure of blood cortisol. it is all "trait-anxiety" scales and behavioural/self-report measures

Originally posted by Deja~vu
When I did it like all day, I got really sleepy.

how would you have had to have felt after listening to the stimuli so that you would have said it had no effect though?

you got sleepy, were you supposed to get sleepy? or did you just spend all day with headphones on and were now tired

It could possibly work because I was listening to peaceful type theta waves, I think. Yeah, it was theta waves (4 Hz - 7 Hz)

ok, but what would you have had to feel for you to think it didn't work?

Well, I read there was some skepticism about it, but I only tried the lower frequencies. The ones I did listen to and saved were quite peaceful. Also, I noticed that I had been agitated for a few days before, and after a few days of listening to them, I was feeling pretty well and happy and in a really good mood. I don't know if it was a coincidence or not.

I think I'll try listening to higher waves and see if I get more energetic like it says.

Oh, and I found them all on Youtube.

ok, but do you not think that knowing you should be energized by the tones might make you energized, and not the beats themselves?

No, you misunderstand. I'm not interested in understanding what the claims associated with Binaural Beats are (I understand those perfectly), what I wanted to know is what they actually are, that is, what is the theory behind why they would have any impact to begin with?

ya, I hear you, I did some digging, let me get to a device that isn't my phone though

Originally posted by inimalist
ok, but do you not think that knowing you should be energized by the tones might make you energized, and not the beats themselves? Well, the skeptics were stating the same thing as you are, So I really don't know.

I wish I had saved the site that really got into detail about how they are made and who came up with this. All I remember is that these tones are frequency tones and different frequencies are said to change your brain frequencies by your brain mimicking the tones or frequencies.

methinks you underestimate the effects of expectation

Who knows. I couldn't find that one site, but this one is a guy who explalins the different brain waves and alters his with his EEG machine or something to that fact.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFFMtq5g8N4&feature=fvw

LOL

EEG measures electrical activity in the brain, it doesn't alter it

Originally posted by inimalist
LOL

EEG measures electrical activity in the brain, it doesn't alter it

It gets use for that indirectly by people who are really into bio-feedback.

that wouldn't be EEG then, there are no "output" parts to an EEG system

Originally posted by Deja~vu
Who knows. I couldn't find that one site, but this one is a guy who explalins the different brain waves and alters his with his EEG machine or something to that fact.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFFMtq5g8N4&feature=fvw

ok, so I watched about a minute and a half, and I'm done

I can't say for sure that his machine isn't measuring alpha, theta and beta waves, but otherwise, every statement he has said is false

for instance, the right/left split being logic/art is laughable

god, I hope he isn't talking while he is doing the EEG, because, you know, as a well trained practitioner of neuroimaging technology, he would understand the artifacts that would produce in the signal. Or does he talk about methodology after the 2 min point? did I miss it?

EDIT: lol, ok, so maybe he wasn't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D_Mnuzp4ck&feature=related

Ooo I wish I had something to smoke for this one. LOL

Any good theta beats?

Google them on Youtube. There are a lot of them. Mostly Theta for some reason. I believe it is connected with people who use it for meditation.

Originally posted by King Kandy
No, you misunderstand. I'm not interested in understanding what the claims associated with Binaural Beats are (I understand those perfectly), what I wanted to know is what they actually are, that is, what is the theory behind why they would have any impact to begin with?

ok, so a binaural signal is actually very important to all animals. It is what allows us to locate a sound in 3-D space. Think about a post in the ocean. A wave comes in, hits one side first, then the other. Soundwaves work much the same for our ears, and the delay between a sound hitting them both can be calculated to a location, which is done likely either in the hippocampus or some sensory integration site in the parietal cortex (just guestimating)

now, binaural beats are sort of like this. To explain, let me talk about a visual phenomenon. If you present two images to a person, one to each eye, instead of a blending of the two, what happens is the brain quickly switches between them. So if there is a house in one eye and a flower in the other, subjects will report seeing first the house, then the flower, clearly. Insted of superimposing the images on one another, the brain chooses to attend to each separatly.

Now, I don't know this for certain (in fact, in all the research I could find about binaural beats, nothing, NOTHING, talked about mechanism at a serious neurological level ) but I assume the theory behind a binaural beat is similar. By presenting 2 tones to the different ears, the brain quickly cycles between them, creating a sign-wave pattern alternating between the frequency in the left ear and the right.

The theory goes that, now that the brain areas responsible for hearing and binaural-localization of sound are activated to this "beat", such pattern of firing should spread throughout the brain through "entrainment". Entrainment is the idea that, because brain areas may share neurological connections, they will fire in a pattern similar to these other areas, eventually synchronizing activity enough to produce brainwaves that would make you "relaxed" or whatever. Now, it might seem like I am being dismissive, especially since this is exactly what happens during serious seizures. In the most severe cases, the corpus collosum, the tract of neurons most responsible for bringing information from one side of the brain to the other, is cut to prevent seizures from moving from one hemisphere to the other. However, given there are several connections between auditory areas and motor areas, it would take some theoretical juking to explain why this binaural synchronization isn't causing seizures.

There are other issues, for instance, pub med has maybe 2 studies that show a positive result for clinical use of this tactic, but they conflict with eachother (one says beta waves are the effective ones, one says delta, in such a way that their results are mutually exclusive) and further, has some pilot studies where depression and anxiety are raised through the use of these beats. The more rigiourous the test, the less results are found.

There is a methodology of EEG and such side to this, I'll give it to you if you want, but hopefully this covered what you were looking for...

I don't mean to sound overly against the idea, it just really seems nonsensical and has failed any form of replication at all. Like, and I'm super serial here guys, if brainwaves were this super important part of brain function, us neuroscientists would spend a lot less money and time designing fMRI studies. I'm not saying EEG is useless, but there really aren't people out there going "gee, lets check the beta brainwave levels on this guy!". Well, maybe they are, but they are making cheesy youtube videos

http://www.physorg.com/news150781868.html

I had been reading about these sorts of games for the last maybe 5 years that can also train your brain waves. This link was just one of the many.

I wonder what this could all lead to?

yes, there are machines that can identify electrical activity in the brain

this is so different from what we are talking about though....

Originally posted by inimalist
no there isn't

even in the anxiety/stress research, nobody has done an actual measure of blood cortisol. it is all "trait-anxiety" scales and behavioural/self-report measures


Are you sure? (because I'm not so sure. I've looked and I cannot be positive that there's no effect, at all...but whether it is binaural beats, I'm not too sure. Read on if you wanna know what I mean.)


This is the only one I've ever read and I do not consider it statistically significant (8 isn't enough, IMO.)


"Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Binaural beat technology (BBT) products are sold internationally as personal development and health improvement tools. Producers suggest benefit from regular listening to binaural beats including reduced stress and anxiety, and increased focus, concentration, motivation, confidence, and depth in meditation. Binaural beats are auditory brainstem responses that originate in the superior olivary nucleus as a result of different frequency auditory stimuli provided to each ear. Listeners to binaural beat "hear" a beat at a frequency equal to the difference between the frequencies of the applied tones.

OBJECTIVES: The objectives of this pilot study were to gather preliminary data on psychologic and physiologic effects of 60 days daily use of BBT for hypothesis generation and to assess compliance, feasibility, and safety for future studies.

DESIGN: Uncontrolled pilot study.

SUBJECTS: Eight healthy adults participated in the study.

INTERVENTION: Participants listened to a CD with delta (0-4 Hz) binaural beat frequencies daily for 60 days.

OUTCOME MEASURES: Psychologic and physiological data were collected before and after a 60-day intervention. PSYCHOLOGIC: Depression (Beck Depression Inventory-2), anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), mood (Profile of Mood States), absorption (Tellegen Absorption Scale) and quality of Life (World Health Organization-Quality of Life Inventory). PHYSIOLOGICAL: Cortisol, dehydroepiandrosterone, melatonin, insulin-like growth factor-1, serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, weight, blood pressure, high sensitivity C-reactive protein.

RESULTS: There was a decrease in trait anxiety (p = 0.004), an increase in quality of life (p = 0.03), and a decrease in insulin-like growth factor-1 (p = 0.01) and dopamine (p = 0.02) observed between pre- and postintervention measurements.

CONCLUSIONS: Binaural beat technology may exhibit positive effect on self-reported psychologic measures, especially anxiety. Further research is warranted to explore the effects on anxiety using a larger, randomized and controlled trial.

PMID: 17309374 "

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17309374

I didn't look too deep into how it was controlled. Was it controlled with 2 other groups: one with regular "relaxing" music and one with no music?

That's the study I want to see.


I didn't want to say "It's complete shit! Don't waste your time!" because I could then end up being wrong.

Again, my personal opinion on it is:

"I think the "high" portion is more placebo than "science"."

that is a pilot study with 8 participants, zero controls, and no blinds

its worth about as much as the authors say it is, "this may mean something", but given there is no replication of that data over 30-40 years of research into the phenomenon, and other such pilot studies find either opposite results (increase in depression), no results, or mutually exclusive results (different waves produce the effects), I'm more than willing to say this is a chance result.

be very careful with pilot data (EDIT: because it isn't really valid experimental data). They do have reasonable p levels, but like you said, its 8 people, who know they are getting the treatment, and no placebo/regular music control (studies that do have these controls typically find no result, though there is one that says it is beta waves and not delta waves, and again, the other that found an increase in trait-depression)

I think I maybe can be able to help?

I used to have severe headaches all the time, so I did/took neurobiofeedback. Two ekg patches went on my head, one behind my right ear and one above my left. These produced sounds, and then the nurse would put a "game" on the television. The first was something like pac-man, and she told me "the faster the pac-man eats the circles, the faster your brain is training you "

It was the freakiest thing. OF MY LIFE. There was no way to control it except for trying to relax and not think about anything, which, you know, you're told not to think about an elephant and you think about an elephant.

But I went once a week and ended up doing two "games" with that extreme frustration on my part. I stopped that when I was... 17? So five years ago.

One and a half years ago, I fell down a flight of stairs and got a spiral fracture in my left fibia.

I walked around on that thing for three weeks before I decided to get it checked out .

Three months in a boot for me!!
BUT. I felt no pain walking on this totally broken ankle. For THREE. WEEKS.

That makes me think that the neurobiofeedback helped.
It sounds a little like this.... but I'm not sure. If it is, THEN IT WORKS.

Well then, let's all try it. It's all free on youtube. I was doing it for a bit. I felt better, but maybe if we all do our own little study and report back we could come up with our own conclusions and then discuss those.

I think it's worth a go.

Each of us could use a Theta or maybe we could all chose something different, but I think using only one would be a better test.

Heck, I'm gonna do it any. LOL

The sessions were a half hour at the most - beyond that, the brain doesn't "train," it just retraces the new tracks. It can make you really tired, like I couldn't drive home from the feedback because I was sleeping.

Mmmm... the environment should be warm, dark and relaxing, don't go over 1/2 hour...

But there's really no point unless YouTube tells you wwhat you're supposed to train for.

And then there's always the risk that Neo-Nazis are putting video up.
'Cuz, you know, that'd be easy to put it on YouTube.