Although the creation of binaural beats music has only been possible through technological advancement in the last 100 or so years, the use of this type of sound therapy dates back thousands of years.

Ancient cultures were aware of how the brain could be entrained through sound repetition long before modern science was able to prove the process.

History notes many examples of music used as medicine and therapy:

1. The ancient Greeks used music to ease stress, promote sleep, and soothe pain.

2. The Native Americans and Africans used singing and chanting as part of their healing rituals.

3. Even in language we see a connection between healing and music. For example, the Chinese character for medicine includes the character for music (1).

Of course, in times past, societies didn't refer to music therapy, binaural beats, or brainwave entrainment of any kind. But what they did know was that sound had powerful healing properties.

Interestingly, scientist Melinda Maxfield, PhD, conducted research on the drumbeats used during rituals of ancient cultures and found that they generally beat at a steady rate of 4.5 beats per second.

This consistent beat induced a trance-like state for the tribe, due to the brain following along at a 4.5 beats-per-second brainwave frequency, which is a low Theta brainwave state, as you'll learn about later on.

Indeed, in almost every ancient culture, repetitive beat formats have played an important role in wellbeing and prosperity.

For example: through the use of repetitive drumming and chanting, Tibetan monks, Native American shamans, Hindu healers, and master Yogis have been able to induce specific states of being for meditation, transcending consciousness, and healing.

Binaural beats provide benefits in the same way, helping with deeper meditation, stress release, reduced anxiety, improved focus, better sleep, and more.

Heinrich Willhelm Dove

The way in which binaural beats work was first discovered in 1839, by a Prussian physicist and meteorologist named Heinrich Wilhelm Dove.

Dove was a keen experimenter, and it was one of his experiments that would pave the way for exploration in the field of brainwave entrainment.

Of course, headphones weren’t available back then, so Dove conducted the following experiment to make his discovery:

Dove had his subject stand in a room. Then, on one side of the room he placed a tuning fork. The fork was connected to a tube that ran to the subject's ear.

Dove then placed a tuning fork on the other side of the room and ran a tube to the other ear.

The forks didn't vibrate at quite the same low frequency, so the subject received different frequencies to the right and left ears.

Dove documented that his subject perceived the effect of the two frequencies combining as a slow beat. We now know this to be the same theory behind the binaural beats phenomena.

Dr. Gerald Oster

Dove made the discovery but didn't connect all the dots.

Indeed, it wasn't until 1973 that biophysicist Doctor Gerald Oster brought binaural beats into mainstream awareness in a paper called ‘Auditory Beats in the Brain' (Scientific American, 1973).

Oster's paper tied-together the different aspects of research that had taken place since Dove's discovery. He gave the subject renewed relevance to modern scientific questions regarding how sound might aid impairments.

Central to his thesis, and indeed what sparked renewed interest and research into how binaural beats might help with modern day afflictions such as anxiety, insomnia, pain issues, and memory problems, was that binaural beats involve different neural pathways than conventional hearing, and that listening evokes specific neural responses.

50 years on and lots of research by scientists and music researchers later, Binaural Beats (brainwave entrainment) Music is used by people all over the world to assist in stress and anxiety relief, help with concentration and memory issues, improve sleep, and provide pain relief.

The word binaural means “having or relating to two ears”. This represents the process, which works by simultaneously sending a different sound frequency to each ear through headphones.

The entrainment happens inside the brain and is caused by a physiological response.

Upon hearing two tones of different frequencies – sent simultaneously to the left and right ears – the brain perceives a new tone, or third tone, as some refer to it, based on the mathematical difference between the two frequencies.

The brain then follows along at the new frequency and produces brainwaves at the same rate of Hertz (Hz), thus becoming “entrained” to that frequency.

Hertz (Hz) is the way we measure a cycle of sound. 1 Hertz means one vibration cycle per second

For example: If a 200 Hz sound frequency is sent to the left ear, and a 205 Hz frequency to the right ear, the brain will perceive a new frequency at 5 Hz – the difference between the two.

The brain then follows along at the new frequency (5 Hz), producing brainwaves at the same rate of Hertz (Hz). The technical term for this process is ‘Frequency Following Response'.

The brain will only respond in the intended way if it receives the sound frequencies at the same time through headphones.