6 ms·

I wonder how much this can be applied to day to day life. For example, the Binaural app on the iOS app store acts as a wave generator that lets you listen to sp

by Shank 9y ago

I wonder how much this can be applied to day to day life. For example, the Binaural app on the iOS app store acts as a wave generator that lets you listen to specific frequencies. I'd be interested to see if you could force yourself into getting beta wave activity in the brain by just listening to beta frequencies -- almost as if to tune yourself manually.

wolco 9y ago
I would love to see someone reply with personal experience. I have tried similiar apps for extremely brief periods and could feel a change.
- mostlyskeptical 9y ago
  The placebo effect is still an effect.
  - RBerenguel 9y ago
    Yup. I use this app sparingly, and I feel a mild effect. And actually I don’t care if it’s placebo (likely) or not, since it kind of works as I want
- yoz-y 9y ago
  Personal experience is the bane of science. And plural of “anectode” is “anectodes”, not “data”. Having worked in the field for years, I am pretty sure that listening to some sound at some frequency might induce that rhythm in the appropriate part of the brain (I have worked on SSVEP which is the same thing for visual stimuli, and is easily detectable, there is also some evidence that it could work for sensory motor stimuli). However, inducing some frequency somewhere in the brain is pretty useless. Beta activity has been known for some time as the “activity” indicator. But this is simply because that is the working frequency of the brain. Active means just that, is it good is it bad? That depends. One thing that strikes me in the field is how sure people are that anything “induced” in the brain will be positive. If the binaural beats thing really worked, then you would have as much chance to create depression as a sense of calmness.
  - abusoufiyan 9y ago
    > Personal experience is the bane of science. And plural of “anectode” is “anectodes”, not “data”. And yet, eugenics was kind of heavily touted by scientists precisely because of an inability to accept as valid the personal experiences of the populations it targeted.
chc 9y ago
Expecting your brain to operate in a way that produces certain frequencies because your ears are detecting air vibrations with those frequencies sounds extremely homeopathic.
- bitcurious 9y ago
  This study of memory loss in mice found that exposing them to light at about 40hz triggered gamma waves and reduced plaque formation. https://news.mit.edu/2016/visual-stimulation-treatment-alzheimer-1207 https://news.mit.edu/2016/visual-stimulation-treatment-alzhe...
  - delecti 9y ago
    We perceive visual stimuli as distinct events (up to a certain frequency), but when hearing, a 40 Hz sound isn't perceived as 40 individual sounds per second.
    - cassianoleal 9y ago
      Perhaps because it isn't? Waves are not discrete structures. 40Hz means you have 40 wave cycles per second, not 40 discrete sounds.
      - delecti 9y ago
        That's kinda what I'm getting at. My understanding is that brain waves are more akin to a CPU clock, with various processes being synchronized, than to a sound wave. If that's the case, then you wouldn't have any reason to expect sound to make a difference in your brain's clock rate, but you could reasonably expect light pulses to.
- tw1010 9y ago
  Dismissing it based on nothing more than a feeling, and no data, is just as irrational as homeopaths.
  - 9y ago
jpfed 9y ago
But note that in this study the beta wave activity turned on and off in task-sensitive ways. It may not be useful to have some stimulus that increases or decreases beta wave amplitude in ways that are not sensitive to exactly what your brain needs at that very moment. I mean, imagine you were investigating a CPU and found a pin that went high when the CPU wanted to write to memory. You wouldn't think "yeah, remembering shit is awesome, let's connect this to Vcc". No, that pin is only supposed to go high at specific times depending on exactly what the CPU is doing.
caycep 9y ago
I liken it to current scientists trying to figure out how a modern motherboard or CPU works by sticking oscilloscopes onto individual circuits. Sure, you can get a readout of the fourier transforms and thus band frequency power of all the little signals going back and forth the little metal circuits and stuff. But it's really a small piece of the puzzle. To wit - a lot of song and dance has been made regarding beta power in the subthalamic nucleus in Parkinson's patients (mostly because it is the only place we are FDA-allowed to go in a live human brain). Some ambitious researchers are claiming beta power is the "pathological signal" of Parkinson's disease...whereas it's more likely it's an epiphenomena of deeper computational issues with a damage basal ganglia circuit'
john_moscow 9y ago
>I'd be interested to see if you could force yourself into getting beta wave activity in the brain by just listening to beta frequencies -- almost as if to tune yourself manually. Does it actually carry over? From what I understand about the speech recognition, our brain must be doing some equivalent of the Fourier transform fairly early in the pipeline (i.e. instead of a beta-wave, our brain will just get a more or less constant signal that this part of the audible spectrum is currently active).

by Shank 9y ago

wolco 9y ago

I would love to see someone reply with personal experience. I have tried similiar apps for extremely brief periods and could feel a change.

mostlyskeptical 9y ago
The placebo effect is still an effect.
- RBerenguel 9y ago
  Yup. I use this app sparingly, and I feel a mild effect. And actually I don’t care if it’s placebo (likely) or not, since it kind of works as I want
yoz-y 9y ago
Personal experience is the bane of science. And plural of “anectode” is “anectodes”, not “data”. Having worked in the field for years, I am pretty sure that listening to some sound at some frequency might induce that rhythm in the appropriate part of the brain (I have worked on SSVEP which is the same thing for visual stimuli, and is easily detectable, there is also some evidence that it could work for sensory motor stimuli). However, inducing some frequency somewhere in the brain is pretty useless. Beta activity has been known for some time as the “activity” indicator. But this is simply because that is the working frequency of the brain. Active means just that, is it good is it bad? That depends. One thing that strikes me in the field is how sure people are that anything “induced” in the brain will be positive. If the binaural beats thing really worked, then you would have as much chance to create depression as a sense of calmness.
- abusoufiyan 9y ago
  > Personal experience is the bane of science. And plural of “anectode” is “anectodes”, not “data”. And yet, eugenics was kind of heavily touted by scientists precisely because of an inability to accept as valid the personal experiences of the populations it targeted.

chc 9y ago

Expecting your brain to operate in a way that produces certain frequencies because your ears are detecting air vibrations with those frequencies sounds extremely homeopathic.

bitcurious 9y ago
This study of memory loss in mice found that exposing them to light at about 40hz triggered gamma waves and reduced plaque formation. https://news.mit.edu/2016/visual-stimulation-treatment-alzheimer-1207 https://news.mit.edu/2016/visual-stimulation-treatment-alzhe...
- delecti 9y ago
  We perceive visual stimuli as distinct events (up to a certain frequency), but when hearing, a 40 Hz sound isn't perceived as 40 individual sounds per second.
  - cassianoleal 9y ago
    Perhaps because it isn't? Waves are not discrete structures. 40Hz means you have 40 wave cycles per second, not 40 discrete sounds.
    - delecti 9y ago
      That's kinda what I'm getting at. My understanding is that brain waves are more akin to a CPU clock, with various processes being synchronized, than to a sound wave. If that's the case, then you wouldn't have any reason to expect sound to make a difference in your brain's clock rate, but you could reasonably expect light pulses to.
tw1010 9y ago
Dismissing it based on nothing more than a feeling, and no data, is just as irrational as homeopaths.
- 9y ago

jpfed 9y ago

But note that in this study the beta wave activity turned on and off in task-sensitive ways. It may not be useful to have some stimulus that increases or decreases beta wave amplitude in ways that are not sensitive to exactly what your brain needs at that very moment. I mean, imagine you were investigating a CPU and found a pin that went high when the CPU wanted to write to memory. You wouldn't think "yeah, remembering shit is awesome, let's connect this to Vcc". No, that pin is only supposed to go high at specific times depending on exactly what the CPU is doing.

caycep 9y ago

I liken it to current scientists trying to figure out how a modern motherboard or CPU works by sticking oscilloscopes onto individual circuits. Sure, you can get a readout of the fourier transforms and thus band frequency power of all the little signals going back and forth the little metal circuits and stuff. But it's really a small piece of the puzzle. To wit - a lot of song and dance has been made regarding beta power in the subthalamic nucleus in Parkinson's patients (mostly because it is the only place we are FDA-allowed to go in a live human brain). Some ambitious researchers are claiming beta power is the "pathological signal" of Parkinson's disease...whereas it's more likely it's an epiphenomena of deeper computational issues with a damage basal ganglia circuit'

john_moscow 9y ago

>I'd be interested to see if you could force yourself into getting beta wave activity in the brain by just listening to beta frequencies -- almost as if to tune yourself manually. Does it actually carry over? From what I understand about the speech recognition, our brain must be doing some equivalent of the Fourier transform fairly early in the pipeline (i.e. instead of a beta-wave, our brain will just get a more or less constant signal that this part of the audible spectrum is currently active).