PUBLISHED 4TH/JAN/2023

Brainwave entrainment: What is it?

The principles behind brainwave entrainment are millennia old, despite the fact that it is a relatively recent, popular biohacking technique. People in the Bronze Age employed ceremonial spaces that were acoustically adjusted to specific brainwave frequencies to create altered states of consciousness. The spinning wheels that the ancient Greeks created had a particular design that allowed sunlight to flicker through them.

Modern brainwave entrainment uses pulsating sounds, lights, electromagnetic fields, and other types of stimuli to direct the brain to enter a specific state. Basically, the stimulation persuades the brain to coordinate its activity with the external stimulation. Low-power stimulation can be used to influence brain activity, or higher energy stimulation can directly activate brain cells.

The most common effects of brainwave entrainment include trance, improved focus, relaxation, meditation, or tiredness. Others might get seizures or other adverse consequences. It's advised to avoid using brainwave entrainment if you know you're prone to seizures.

It's crucial to remember that scientists still don't fully comprehend how certain brain rhythms function or where they come from. They might represent a fundamental aspect of how the brain functions, a byproduct of other brain activity, or something else that we haven't yet identified. It's impossible to say for sure whether brainwave entrainment is advantageous because it depends on inducing certain brain rhythms artificially.

Brainwave entrainment can be accomplished in a number of ways, including; haptic (vibrational), electric, and magnetic, audio stimulation.

Audio Stimulation

The vestibulocochlear nerve, which connects your ears and brain directly, has been utilized to entrain brain waves through a variety of auditory stimulation techniques. This sort of brainwave entrainment is the easiest to employ since it only needs sound. Simply conduct a fast YouTube search if you want to try it out for yourself.

Isochronic tones, binaural beats, and monaural beats are three different sound types that can be used for audio stimulation.

Brainwave Entrainment's Benefits

Brainwave entrainment gadget manufacturers do make some outrageous claims. Some claim that using their products can increase your IQ, help you lose weight, and make you more creative.

We believe that many of these "perks" are merely marketing gimmicks. The following are the actual potential advantages of brainwave entrainment:

1. Increased attention (gamma and beta waves)
2. Mood boost (gamma and beta waves)
3. Reduced stress and anxiety (alpha waves)
4. Improved memory (gamma and beta waves)
5. Healthy sleep (theta and delta waves)
6. Enhanced meditation (alpha waves)

As you can see, every kind of brain wave corresponds to a distinct condition. Choosing a sound linked to a specific brain wave to change your state of mind is called brainwave entrainment.

How Effective Is Brainwave Entrainment?

Now for the crucial inquiry: Does this approach truly work? To assess the efficacy of brainwave entrainment, let's examine a range of studies.

According to a thorough analysis of brainwave entrainment, it is "an efficient therapeutic approach." This review discovered that brainwave entrainment helped children with behavioral issues, prevented migraines, eased muscle pain, and relieved PMS symptoms in addition to reducing anxiety and pain for day surgery patients.

Another study looked into how brainwave entrainment affected those with ADHD. The findings of this study imply that brainwave entrainment has a moderate effect on participants' problem-solving abilities.

Studies on binaural beats in particular indicated that exposure to beta wave binaural beats improved memory while exposure to theta wave binaural beats increased sleep length.

Even though these studies seem to show that brainwave entrainment actually works, it's crucial to be aware of rare potential negative effects that could happen as a result. These symptoms include stress, nauseousness, migraines, vertigo, convulsions, a faster heartbeat, and intense subconscious imagery. Use of brainwave entrainment should be stopped right once if you encounter any of these symptoms.

Although there are many methods to employ brainwave entrainment, you might need to try out a few various gadgets and locations first. Each brain is unique.

Reference:

https://hapbee.com/blogs/hapbee/everything-you-need-to-know-about-brainwave-entrainment.