Joseph E. Donlan

The following website has a piece dealing with binaural beats:

Title: Binaural Beats
source:
h–p://skeptoid.com/episodes/4147

(replace “–” with tt)

Apart from the general article, could you address the following as it relates to ideas contained in your book.

Article extracts:
“But the question is: Does it have a special effect on the brain? A lot of people think so. The basic claim being made for binaural beats is “resonant entrainment”. Entrainment, in physics, is when two systems which oscillate at different frequencies independently are brought together, they synchronize with one another, at whatever the combined system’s resonant frequency is. Examples of entrainment occur in animals in nature; for example the chirping of crickets or the croaking of frogs. Synchronization of menstrual cycles in women is another example. Even people coming together and dancing with one another is a type of entrainment. The basic claim for binaural beats is that the perceived low-frequency beat will entrain your brain wave pattern, thus forcing your brain into some desired state.

Most of these web sites give some brief explanation of entrainment. The example you hear most often is that of Dutch polymath Christiaan Huygens, who in 1665, hung two pendulum clocks next to each other on a wall. He noticed that the pendulums eventually matched each others’ frequency, but always in antiphase, opposite to each other, as if canceling each other out. He’d try disturbing one or setting them in sync, but they’d always return to the same antiphase synchronization. Huygen’s experience is widely touted on binaural beat websites as a demonstration of how systems can become spiritually connected through some energy field. However, they misunderstand what happened, and have not read the full story. Huygens also tried taking one clock off the wall, and as soon as they were no longer physically connected to one another via the actual wall, the effect disappeared. It was not the proximity of the clocks to one another that created the entrainment; it was their physical, mechanical connection to one another. As each pendulum swung it imparted an infinitesimal equal and opposite reaction to the wall itself. With two clocks on the wall, the system naturally sought the lowest energy level, according to the laws of thermodynamics; and both pendulums would thus swing exactly counter to each other, minimizing the system’s total energy.”

“So to summarize their claim, they’re saying that entrainment means that a binaural beat will cause your brain’s electroencephalogram to match the pattern of the phantom beat. Well, if it did, entrainment certainly doesn’t apply and would not be part of the equation, so we can scratch that off the list. But it doesn’t make the claimed observation wrong. We do know that certain electroencephalogram waveforms are often associated with certain kinds of activity. For example, physical activity or REM sleep often produces an electroencephalogram with a sine wave of between 4 and 8 Hz, which we term a theta pattern. Waking relaxation with eyes closed often produces a pattern from 8 to 12 Hz, which is called an alpha pattern. There are only a few characterized patterns, and pretty general descriptions of what kinds of activities go with them. The claim made by the binaural beat sellers depends on much more granular and specific matches. For example, the claim that a binaural beat with a frequency of X produces the same effect in your brain as Vicodin is wholly implausible. Such claims presume that we know the exact frequency of the electroencephalogram in each of these desired conditions, and the fact is that brain waves don’t work that way. It is wholly and absolutely implausible to say that desired brain condition X will occur if we get your EEG to read exactly X Hz.”

These quotes deal with entrainment; a topic you dealt with in your books.

As usual, looking forward to your responses.

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