2015 for a review on the effect of binaural beats on cognition and mood). The theoretical idea behind neural entrainment is that the rhythmic oscillatory activity within and between different brain regions can enhance cognitive functioning (see Chaieb et al. The basic assumption is that listening to binaural beats in a specific frequency band will entrain the same frequency in the brain (Becher et al. Indeed, it has been proposed that binaural beats represent a neural entrainment technique by means of which the brain “takes over” or synchronizes its activity based on external acoustic stimulation (Chaieb et al. Even though direct causal links between neural activity and binaural beats are yet to be demonstrated, there is converging evidence that binaural beats are accompanied by, and systematically related to, neural synchronization. However, beat-generated ASSR in the gamma-frequency seem to originate mainly in the primary auditory cortex (Pastor et al. It was shown that the auditory steady-state responses (ASSR) to binaural beats emerged from the superior temporal, posterior parietal, and frontal cortices, in addition to the auditory cortex. ![]() ( 2006) explored the cortical representation of binaural beat frequencies by applying modulation frequencies of 4.00–6.66 Hz while recording magnetic fields using magnetoencephalography. For instance, when the left ear is presented with a tone of 320 Hz, and the right ear with a tone of 360 Hz, the subject will perceive a tone that oscillates at a frequency of 40 Hz (i.e., 40 beats per second). The experience of such oscillations is described as hearing a sound with a frequency equal to the difference in frequencies between the original tones (Oster 1973). Binaural beats are perceived as periodic loudness fluctuations of a sound (Karino et al. Our results suggest that binaural beats enhance selectivity in updating episodic memory traces and further strengthen the hypothesis that neural activity in the gamma band is critically associated with the control of feature binding.īinaural beats represent the auditory experience of an oscillating sound that occurs when two sounds with neighboring frequencies are presented to one’s left and right ear separately. While the size of visuomotor binding costs (indicating the binding of visual and action features) was unaffected by the binaural beats, the size of visual feature binding costs (which refer to the binding between the two visual features) was considerably smaller during gamma-frequency binaural beats exposure than during the control condition. ![]() ![]() Healthy adults listened to gamma-frequency (40 Hz) binaural beats or to a constant tone of 340 Hz (control condition) for ten minutes before and during a feature-repetition task. Given that neural synchronization in the gamma band has been associated with visual feature bindings, we investigated whether the impact of binaural beats extends to the top-down control of feature bindings. ![]() These partial-repetition (or binding) costs point to the existence of temporary episodic bindings (event files) that are automatically retrieved by repeating at least one of their features. Recent studies of feature-repetition effects demonstrated interactions between perceptual features and action-related features: repeating only some, but not all features of a perception–action episode hinders performance. Binaural beats have been shown to impact information processing via their putative role in increasing neural synchronization. Binaural beats represent the auditory experience of an oscillating sound that occurs when two sounds with neighboring frequencies are presented to one’s left and right ear separately.
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