Mind Alive Blog

Some of you may have viewed the news stories recently regarding parents’ concern over “digital drugs.” Apparently, kids are listening to binaural beats soundtracks in the hopes that they’ll feel like they’re on various drugs, including LSD and ecstasy. As many of the experts have explained, there is no truth to these claims. While the website shows many testimonials praising the effects of these “doses,” it’s most likely creative acting for the purpose of generating a hoax. It might be possible that with a heavy amount of up-front hyping that a placebo effect might have been produced from the hype, but I would even doubt that and mark it up to being an out-right scam for the sake of making money. In my 26 years in entrainment, I’ve never seen anything close to what iDosing is claiming.


While brainwave entrainment is well proven using isochronic tones and monaural beats, entrainment via binaural beats is minimal. Binaural beats certainly cannot produce the effects of consuming illegal drugs. Binaural beats are perceived by presenting two different tones at slightly different pitches (or frequencies) separately into each ear. This effect is produced in the brain, not in the ears as with monaural beats. It is produced by the neural output from the ears and created within the olivary body within the brain, in its attempt to “locate” the direction of the sound based on phase.

Binaural beats are not very noticeable because the modulation depth (the difference between loud and quiet) is about 3 db, a two-to-one ratio. (Isochronic tones and monaural beats easily have a 50 db difference between loud and quiet, which is a 100,000-to-1 ratio.) This means that binaural beats are unlikely to produce any significant entrainment because they don’t activate the thalamus. But they do have some hypnotic and relaxing effects by way of dissociation (as does white noise and music).



To view a news story regarding “I-Dosing”:
http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100725/idosing-drugs-100725/20100725/?hub=OttawaHome


To read a full article explaining entraining tones (including isochronic tones, monaural and binaural beats) see:
http://www.mindalive.com/articleeleven_Entrainment_Tones_and_Binaural_Beats.htm

Labels: binaural beats