This is a question I get asked a fair bit, because many vendors advertise that their binaural beats target specific areas/themes such as memory improvement, creativity, better sleep etc.
Yet logical thinking suggest that a binaural beats track can target only a zone; theta, beta, delta, or alpha. So I did some digging and here's the answer to this:
40 or so years ago it was known only that specific brain states existed, and that through the “frequency response process” induced by binaural beats, the brain can be moved “entrained” to different states.
Since then, sound engineers/brain entrainment experts have learned that creating recordings at specific points within these zones enables more targeted brain entrainment – to increase learning power, creativity, energy, etc.
To hone in on one particular theme is primarily done through user-testing. For example, the lower you go in the Theta frequency range the deeper the relaxation.
So if we a brand wanted to target anxiety rather than simply relaxation they would go deeper in that frequency range and test the recording on listeners with anxiety, and keep tweaking until it prevented anxiety rather than simply relaxed the person a little.
The second part to the ‘targeting process' is that the brainstate is manipulated through the soundscape, and so engineers use sounds conducive to the specific state they're targeting.
So let”s just say it's an Astral Projection recording, the engineers would use a soundscape that created a hypnotic state by using frequency modulation coupled with trippy sounds to take the listener into a dream-like and hallucinatory zone.
Binaural Beats Evolution Means Growing Popularity
Binaural beats are really growing in popularity at the moment, largely due to how advanced the recordings are becoming in terms of targeting specific states.
They are increasingly being used by therapists as a natural therapy to help patients suffering from ADHD, depression, stress, insomnia and cognitive behavioural problem areas. Indeed the term “theta therapy” is becoming widely used in holistic medicine circles.
As an engineer (still learning), and through my research I understand that creating effective binaural beats recordings, and indeed any brainwave entrainment recording, is largely down to experience in manipulating sound and understanding how sound/frequencies affect the brain.
If you consider that music is made up of many different frequencies that make the user feel different emotions based on the type of sound, and then take the frequencies that produce a particular state and produce a concentrated recording, this is similar to the binaural beats making process.
It's basically about fine tuning the frequencies to the state the brain is in during a particular emotion or process, be it meditation or learning. It's all pretty amazing really 🙂
I hope I explained that well enough. If not feel free to drop me a comment asking for clarification.
You can read a simple explanation of how the science works here: http://www.binauralbeatsmeditation.com/the-science/
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