Brainwave entrainment through binaural beats: Explanation, Research, first results pu

[TDDAgain]

This thread's purpose is to serve as a small introduction into binaural beats and their effects, without the spiritual woo-woo that is often attached to it. It shall provide you the basic knowledge and tools to dive deeper into this topic.

Due to RN restrictions I can only post 2 videos per post, but all of these are important. So please bear with me splitting the posts. 

To be able to understand the methods and results, a bit of education on some physcial effects and phenomenon are crucial. Skip if you already but I recommend to have a look at it before you start to read the next post. I won't be explaining a lot about the single effects as the resulting transfer thought should be surfacing during reading naturally for you. I tried before explaining everything, the thread would be pages long as the topic is so vast and was just a huge text, easy to loose in and forget the big picture.

What Do Different Brainwaves Mean?
Delta Theta Alpha Beta Gamma waves explained to you. If you never heard about these waves or think the brain swings in a single frequency, it's a must watch to understand.


Brainwave entrainment on molecular level
Not a "must watch" but has a rabbit hole inside that coincidences with another thread upcoming next and will boost your understanding about how it all works.


[to be continued]

[TDDAgain]

Wave propagation, metronome synchronization / entrainment
If you look at this (just skip through) you will notice that one metronome after another goes through phase transition joining up other nearby metronomes frequency. This transition is visible as a wave propagating from the left upper corner also. Watch it propagate until all metronomes have synchronized. The full transition happens around 1:50 into the video.


Constructive waves
Real life example of constructive waves explained quickly and to the point. Works for non water waves too. Focus on this knowledge while you craft the binaurals.

[TDDAgain]

For those who prefer have it explained with images:


The stroboscopic effect
Stroboscopic effect

[TDDAgain]

The Circadian Rhythm and Your Biological Clock in 3 Minutes


Now that you may have informed yourself about all these topics, *slaps and rubs hands* let's get right to it!

Credits & Foreword:
Credit must be given to a deceased family member for almost all the work, my contribution to the research was miniscule as is my understanding in the greater scheme of things. I just carry enough water to bring it here to you. For someone with better knowledge to pick up on it possibly. As I compose this thread for a few days now and the topic keeps growing, I will keep it in a more philosophic orbit, since I am not a brain specialist, but we can scratch the surface of what is generally known and compare it to our observations.

That's why I decided to put it in the paranormal forum.Be your own researcher, think critical and see what works for yourself. Most results are based on me so don't be let down if 0.3Hz does not give you dizzyness but it's 0.5Hz instead for you or it does not work at all. No claims in validity and no interest in arguing. I claim nothing but simply provide the results and my opinion and thoughts. Grain of salt, you are adult enough 


The left and right brain hemisphere / Brainwave lateralization vs. synchronization

In a very crude way, we can say that the left and right brain hemispheres work independent of each other (see chart). In reality contrary to what you often read, our brain's hemispheres do not swing on a single frequency. Nor do the single hemispheres. To really understand the effect binaural beats have, it's important to understand, at least in a very crude way, what it is about these frequencies.

Processing reality
It's important to know a few things about how we tick inside at least on a crude basis. First we need to understand that our brain is clocked. Every sense records and reports in a certain interval. To know and understand these intervals is key to find usable frequencies. To make it even harder, depending on the base frequency, some senses clock rates adjust, too. It is a three step loop, first visual and audio information is received and processed. Subconsciously both are combined together in a second step. At last, causal interference is determined: Does it fit together? If it does, it surfaces back to our conscious perception. If not it is discarded as random or trivial. This is how we experience reality.

Perception of reality
That we experience reality fluidly, is an illusion. Every 250 milliseconds(or 4Hz), our perception alternates between maximum focus and broader situational awareness. Similar to a stroboscobe. This can be tested during meditation, once you reached a state where the theta brainwaves dominate on the lowest point (4Hz) aligning with this clock, open your eyes. The field of vision will slightly pulsate and shrink with a beat @ 4 Hz, like a pulsating incandescent light bulb*. You just tapped into theta frequency spectrum and get to see the effects of your internal conscious workings on your capability to process vision during these transitions. This is key to understand!


A good example is looking at this gif. Click on it and remove the last / and hit enter, then it works. It was too irritating to make it run inside the thread. The pointer turns on all three panels but they are only visible in a certain interval, giving a different appearance. Each clock would represent a sense or other functions, so imagine a lot more.

Theta waves play the most important role
Theta waves (3-8Hz) are responsible for clocking the frontoparietal parts of the brain, the frontal lobe (Beta) and parietal lobes (Gamma). This interaction is responsible for noticing or ignoring external input of all the senses we posses. In a forest, we clock down automatic visually because if we would put attention on every detail, we would experience information overload. This in turn, allows us to focus better while hunting, or in danger. We do not notice the single leaf but see a green mass, until we literally focus, is a common example to explain the effect.


Methods & Insights
Therefor, it is important when we craft and use binaural beats, to be aware of these correlations. A good example is the stroboscopic effect on rotating objects that appear stationary. This is the lever we exploit, to ride the peak waves of perception and utilize constructive wave patterns in our binaural beat later. It gave us the best results of all.

To achieve it without EEG guidance takes practice. EEG guidance means essential that there is a feedback loop. Sensors pick up the different EEG band spectrum, a program modifies the output so the signal is always a bit lower than the actual measured brainwave frequency (overall). While EEG guidance can be imagined like a conveyor belt, simply listening to a certain frequency is behaving like magnet once the brain syncs into the frequency range. The spontaneous synchronization effect is responsible for this. While this entrainment can be gradually modified deeper with EEG, it is not possible without one, since there is no feedback loop.

Someone suffering from epilepsy has that happening during an episode. A flashing light can be enough for these individuals so that their brain entrains to the flashing light rythm. The result are seizures, spawned by more and more parts of the brain entraining with the external signal. In 1997, five seconds of strobing light was enough to entrain the brains of around 700 children and put them into hospital after watching a Japanese cartoon show. (Yes I do have that pattern in store too)

With binaural beats, the almost the same is happening. In the metronome example, all single swinging units can interfere with each other. Binaural beats, sound waves, produced by the speakers swinging, act as a one way bridge. Our ear drums can not produce vibrations on their own and therefor can not influence the speakers. This leads to so called entrainment. The brain seeks harmony between the left and right ear input and therefor will naturally meet in the middle. Since the brain itself is not a single swinging unit but has two hemispheres, both are entrained, too. This process is called hemispherical synchronization through entrainment. They now can work better in tandem and tune to each other. During meditation and also hypnosis, the corpus callosum -the bridge between both hemispheres is stimulated allowing the above to happen.


Example:
Two runners need to transport water from the river to the town. They meet in the middle and exchange bucket. Empty for full. Only have two bucket and if the other one is not there, the runner returns and comes back in his normal interval. Bucket / information can not be exchanged. This works best, when both runners have the same speed and distance (frequency). When they are synchronized in that way, the work or information shared flows best. They are on the same wavelength. This might sound similar for friends and it is in a sense! Return to the clock animation above and imagine that the flashes are the only moments in time they can communicate and need to point into the same direction at that moment, too.

Back to the synchronization. The brain as a whole will quickly adopt the generated binaural waves, but needs more practice in meditation to reach that range. It's audible, too. Something to note, naturally given due to the fact that the brain adopts these rythms and locks onto them, makes it harder to go deeper than the selected frequency band. To find out these frequencies there were some experiments necessary, most were done with visual-audio feedback. Some were trickier to find but we could orientate around other studies and established knowledge.


Rundown:
These are the dimensions we have for a guidance signal manipulation, since we can also switch L/R at any time.
- 2 dimensions directional hearing (stereo)
- generator frequency 1
- generator frequency 2
- target frequency
- volume

We know that visual perception alternates 4 Hz, so 2Hz for focus and 2Hz situational awareness. Every 500ms.
Rule 1: All frequencies should be divideable by 2 therefor, for maximum coverage.

We know that the perception of beat in a pulsating signal becomes audible below 1500Hz. Then we can start to hear pulses.
Rule 2: Generator frequencies can not be higher than 1500Hz.

We know that combining two frequencies will result in a third percepted.
Rule 3: Frequency_1 - Frequency_2 = target frequency

One popular example:
440Hz - 436Hz = 4 Hz
All rules are satisfied!

Now that we have a different sinusoidal wave on each ear, you will get no effects like drunkeness or happyness yet. For that we need to modulate both generator frequencies and modulate a second frequency, on top of our target one. There are different modes to achieve this. Lot's of stuff to play and experiment with, a short crash course in sin function:

Variable  Value  Description
a             1         amplitude (vertical stretch)
b             1         absolute value of the period 0-1 1= 2*pi
h             0         horizontal shift (offset in time based on 2*pi)
k             0         vertical shift


The base formula is y = a * sin ((x - h)/b) + k
1 period is 2pi / b

x = time axis
y = amplitude axis

Variable Value Description
a 1 amplitude (vertical stretch)
b 1 absolute value of the period 0-1 1= 2*pi
h 0 horizontal shift (offset in time based on 2*pi)
k 0 vertical shift


Per ear, past these into the desmos.com XY plotter

Simple wave forms

y = a * sin((x - h)/b)


Double wave forms

Note: (make a negative, switches polarity but double b)
y = a * sin((x - h)/(b/2))
y = -a * sin((x - h)/(b/2))


A way to aim on catching longer or shorter patters (other senses) with a frequency

Can be used for EEG guided entrainment calibration sequence

y = -a * sin((x - h)/b)
y = -a * sin((x - h)/(b+0.1))

Introduce jitter effects on target frequency amplitude with double wave form:
This is one way to modify the signal to produce emotional responses. The trick is to introduce a jitter on both generator frequencies by marginal values. 0.05Hz steps, try it. Normally we would not be able to pick up such low frequency changes, the carrier frequency does this neat trick for us and amplifies it.

y = (a-0.1) * sin((x - h)/b)
y = -a * sin((x - h)/b)


Note: you can alternate all of these for left and right ear in a rythm, too! For stereo you just alternate but if you can do 7 channels, you can introduce a rotation that fits the binaural beat. Just chop the signal into 7 parts, distribute it to the channels in a circle and mind the center speaker or leave it away for symmetric (or else you get a egg shape) then it's 6 parts for a 7.1 headset. For this you manipulate variable h. Be creative! Change L / R, change polarity of amplitudes, play with everything.


Results of introducing jitter to the generator frequencies (resulting in jittering target frequency)
The effects are not instant, need some time to settle in but are repeatable for me. These are literally the words I used to describe, but translated for you
0.1 Hz - no effect
0.2 Hz - sensation of turning, light headedness sometimes headache inducing
0.3 Hz - dizzyness, disorientation, loss of balance
0.4 Hz - sensation of non linear chaotic movement, very uncomfortable sensation in stomach, very uncomfortable to listen to
0.5 Hz - nothing or no effect
0.6 Hz - good mood / wake up on a sunny day
0.7 Hz - definite joy / happyness inducing, light headedness but in a good way.
0.8 Hz - that feeling in the stomach when excited for upcoming events
0.9 Hz - similar to 0.8Hz but not the same
1Hz - no effect


This was part 1, in part two I will publish the tool and source code. Together we will craft a unique binaural beat as we compile the code, might do a video on that one. Part 3 will wrap it all up and we craft a spine tingling audio signal with the knowledge from the above table, might do video on this as well. I hope you could learn new things and that I could bring the topic a bit closer to you.




Resources
Audacity - Audio editing tool for Win/Mac/Linux
desmos.com - XY-Plotter


C# resources
Microsoft Visual Studio 2022
CSCore.NET Audio Library

I recommend creating the frequencies programmatically and dynamic by using Microsoft Visual Express Studio. I might publish the source code for my own tool on github soon and you can compile it yourself. Need to find out how that works though. I won't upload the executable because I made bad experience with self written tools getting tagged by AV tools for no apparent reason other than it's "unknown" to the AV company and I won't wear that shoe. Never compile stuff you do not understand though.

[Wave]

Thanks for reviving this. You put so much great work into your research--I know we've discussed this topic back on the other site several times, glad to see it back. Cheers. WL

[F2d5thCav]

Wave--

Good to see you online again.

Cheers