Tuesday, 11/18/2008

Gnaural is a multi-platform programmable binaural-beat generator, implementing the principles described in the October 1973 Scientific American article "Auditory Beats in the Brain" (Gerald Oster). There has been considerable research done on the subject since that publication, and Gnaural's Windows-based predecessor, WinAural, has been used as the audio stimulus in at least one published study, "The Induced Rhythmic Oscillations of Neural Activity in the Human Brain", D. Cvetkovic, D. Djuwari, I. Cosic (Australia), from Proceeding (417) Biomedical Engineering - 2004.
The central finding of Oster's article: brain activity can be entrained to the auditory beat frequencies created when each ear is presented simultaneously with tones of slightly different frequency. My interest has been exploring how this effect (known as "frequency following response" or "brainwave entrainment") can be used to explore mental states, ranging from profoundly meditative to highly alert.
Author: Bret Logan