For Improving Focus: A study by the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition in the Netherlands had 36 participants listen to gamma-frequency (40 Hz) binaural beats for 3 min before and during a task. Here are some of the highlights of the health benefits of binaural beats from the different studies:ġ. However, there have been a variety of small studies on the focus, health and performance benefits of brainwave entrainment with binaural beats (PubMed lists 142 studies in total). There hasn’t been any large-scale clinic research funded into binaural beats largely because the technology can’t be easily patented so it doesn’t make sense for companies to do expensive studies. Here’s a good overview of how binaural beats work because it can take some repetition to wrap your mind around how the process works: The brain way perceives the binaural beat and resonates to the frequency of the difference in the two tones, which is popularly known as brainwave entrainment, and in the scientific literature, it is called the frequency following response. What happens is your brain interprets the two tones as a beat of their own and aligns your brain waves to produce a beat with a frequency that is the difference in hertz (HZ) of the two tones.įor example, if you are listening to a 430 Hz tone with your left ear and a 440 Hz tone with your right ear, you would be hearing a 10 Hz tone which will entrain your brain waves to the alpha frequency in the range of 8 – 12 Hz. There is also a lot of anecdotal evidence from the millions of people that regularly listen to binaural beats on YouTube to achieve states of deep tranquility, flashes of creative insight, euphoria, intensely focused attention, and enhanced learning abilities.Ī binaural beat is technically an illusion created by the brain when you listen to two tones with slightly different frequencies in each ear simultaneously.

While much of the scientific establishment is skeptical of their benefits, these frequencies have been studied extensively by Robert Monroe and The Monroe Institute over the past 40 years.įrom their extensive research, they argue that inducing brainwave frequencies through the use of binaural beats causes a wide range of effects and could be a revolutionary technology for improving mental health (I will outline the scientific research into the efficacy of binaural beats later in this guide). I’ve also found that they are an effective tool for both active recovery and achieving deep states of relaxation in addition to the benefits of increasing the length of my attention span when doing challenging work online. I’ve been listening to binaural beats to study and relax ever since I discovered Holosync while I was at University and I have found them to be very effective for improving my focus and productivity. They work through signals of two different frequencies that are played separately in each ear, which causes the human brain to detect the phase variation between the frequencies and try to reconcile that difference by creating a third signal - called a binaural beat - which is equal to the difference between those two frequencies. They are used to stimulate and influence your brain’s electrical brain wave activity and guide you to specific mental states that correspond to the frequencies of brainwave entrainment used.

Binaural beats are a method of producing brainwave entrainment.

Binaural beats hz chart