Has anyone ever done the binaural beating thing?

[Keatah]

Has anybody ever used those brainwave tape things? The meditation ones that sound like a single vibrating tone.. But they really are two tones, say one tone is like 100Hz going into the left ear, and the other tone is 110Hz going into the right ear.

Your brain then starts vibrating in resonance to the difference in tones, or a phantom third tone of really low frequency like 10Hz. You don't hear the phantom tone unless you play both tones at once. And you feel it pulsing in your head rather than hearing it.

Supposedly this vibrates your brain's electrical patterns and makes the corpus callosum swell up in size, thereby facilitating interhemispherical communications between the left side and the right side. Supposed to make you super smart.

Does anybody know how to build a home-made EEG machine so I can measure exactly what's going on?

 

[Artlav]

The wave thing is easy to replicate - grab sinegen program, run it twice, set one for the left speaker and other to the right, set the frequencies. And, 10Hz is not supposed to do much, you'll likely want something like 6Hz, which is supposedly a borderline between sleep and meditation or something.

I haven't noticed anything special about the binaural beating tones. It does gives you a sleepy kind of state if you listen long enough, but so does any monotonous sound.

Then again, i find the sound inside a train (soundproofing is not in favour here) calming and sleep-inducing.

Making an EEG machine at home? No idea how.

 

[Kveldulf]

I actually did a speech on it for a class a few years ago. I don't recall hearing that it makes you smarter, but I did talk about the meditative qualities, and how it could be used to relax someone who normally has issues calming down, or relaxing at the end of the day.

In order to demonstrate it to the class, I had a girl who had been suffering from insomnia come up and listen to a 30 minute track while I gave my speech. She told the class at the end that she really was able to relax and would probably have fallen asleep if I had more time to talk. She also asked for the CD after I was done, so she could try it at home :lol:

I don't know about building an EEG either, but you can probably find studies about the phenomenon with a little research. I don't have the sources anymore, but at least one book I used had talked about EEG readings while people were listening to the beats.

 

[Wishbone]

Are you sure it was the tone and not your eloquence that put her to sleep?

 

[Blacklight]

The brainwave rythm things area actually kind of voodoo medicine. I know quite a bit about them. There is no physical proof that they actually do anything. HOWEVER, concentrating on a repeating non harsh sound such as a white noise machine or somesuch can produce relaxation or sleep. It has more to do with learning how to meditate rather than the "vibrations" the sound makes. It can be done with many sounds. The sounds act more of a focus than anything else. Those "subliminal message" tapes have also been proven many times over not to work... yet they can be relaxing if you use them to meditate. It comes down to a placebo effect. If you believe in it, you will probably feel some kind of result.. but that result will probably be self generated.
Anyway.. there is software out on the net that can generate the tones you're talking about.

 

[Mindblast]

I have used some of the Hemi-Sync CDs from the Monroe Institute in the past and have had really interesting results, from sleep/dream induction, meditative states to helping me to focus and be awake while working. There is also a program out there called BWGen, that can be used to easily put together your own tracks.
This stuff works really well for me. I think it doesn't work for everyone though, just like some people can be hypnotized and some can't. I think there is definately more going on than a placebo effect though.

As to building an EEG, there is the openEEG project http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/
I never tried this myself but it looks interesting.

 

[orbekler]

On the market there are some programs that create binaural beats, such Brainwave Generator or Neuro Programmer (this creates Isochronic waves too, that can be used without earphones). Even during late '90s I remember that Cool Edit Pro (now Adobe Audition) had options to create binaural waves. I found some of the sounds generated relaxing, but no mystic magic in it. Also the rain sound often does the same effect.
I think it's really difficult to make studies, as anyone is different and reacts differently to different sounds, and then again, brainwave entrainment is a kind of pseudo-science.

 

[Quick_Nick]

I've heard of it at least, 'tried' it maybe once or twice. It can be a good placebo at least, I'm not positive about more than that.