You’d notice something similar if you simply set two tone generators side by side, but it’d be a monaural beat — you could hear it with just one ear. What’s different about binaural beats is that the mixing of the two tones happens in your head.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Binaural Beats
For years I've used the Nyah-nyah chat of children to illustrate how macroinformation allows us to hear eidetic sounds: things that aren't physically there. Today's Straight Dope newsletter introduces me to an example I hadn't known.Binaural beats (BBs), embraced in recent years by the new-age crowd, are a scientific curiosity first described in 1839 by Prussian scientist H.W. Dove. They occur when two slightly different tones are played simultaneously, one in each ear, causing the brain to perceive a beat whose frequency is the difference between those of the two tones. For example, playing a 370-hertz tone in the left ear and a 380-hertz tone in the right yields a beat with a frequency of ten hertz.
You’d notice something similar if you simply set two tone generators side by side, but it’d be a monaural beat — you could hear it with just one ear. What’s different about binaural beats is that the mixing of the two tones happens in your head. See http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2949/can-binaural-beats-improve-your-mood
You’d notice something similar if you simply set two tone generators side by side, but it’d be a monaural beat — you could hear it with just one ear. What’s different about binaural beats is that the mixing of the two tones happens in your head.
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