brainwavescapes: Isochronic Tones vs Binaural Beats

Headphones

Isochronic tones does not require the use of headphones since both speakers emit the same tones. Binaural beats on the other hand required the use of headphones because each speaker emits different frequencie and the brain 'hears' the difference between the two frequencies. Binaural beats cannot give you the brainwave entrainment you need if you do not use headphones.

Waveforms
The waveforms of isochronic tones are very distinct because the tone and silence are of equal duration making the target frequency very distinguishable. Binaural beats does not alternate to a silence level but only dips a little to a lower volume.

Isochronic tones emits a constant 'toot toot' while binaural beats sounds like a hum.

How do you know that your brain are entrained?

When I do an alpha or a theta session, I yawn when I dip to the lower brainwave. Yawning is an indication that your brain is relaxing.

Isochronic Tones - How Often Should You Listen

Does the frequency of listening to isochronic tones or meditating regularly using these tones affect the benefits you receive from it?

Brain Hemispheres

Our brain is composed of two hemispheres, the left and the right, Each one functions differently, responds differently to different stimuli, has it's own strengths and weaknesses, etc.

Corpus Callusom

The corpus callusom connects the two hemispheres together. This is the area where neural pathways are created and maintained. These neural pathways acts like bridges for the two hemispheres.

Constant Practice Makes Perfect

The practice required for making your two brain hemispheres communicate with each other efficiently is meditation. With meditation, you linger at a lower brainwave frequency for a longer period of time than you normally do.

When we go to sleep, our brainwaves fall into the lower frequency in a gradual manner till we get to the delta stage(deep sleep). With meditation, we get into a specific brainwave and stay there for a certain length of time.

This activity results in neural pathways being created at the corpus callusom. Neural pathways which are already created becomes more distinct and are readily available.

There are normal daily activities when we dip into the lower brainwave frequencies, alpha or theta. These are the times when we are relaxed such as taking a shower, daydreaming, walking and any repetitive activity. However the most effective way of building the neural pathways is through meditation.

To Reduce Pain and Alter Your Brain, Try Meditation

Meditation is a known painkiller, easing people's pain perception even after brief sessions. Now a study reveals why: Meditation changes the way the brain processes pain signals.

In a study presented Nov. 16 in San Diego at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, researchers reported that practicing a mindful awareness of the body and consciousness for just four days affects pain responses in the brain.

Brain activity decreases in areas devoted to the painful body part and in areas responsible for relaying sensory information. Meanwhile, regions that modulate pain get busy, and volunteers report that pain is less intense and less unpleasant.

Earlier studies suggested meditation reduces anxiety, promotes relaxation and helps people regulate their emotions, said study author Fadel Zeidan, a post-doctoral researcher at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Also,meditation may reduce pain by essentially making the physical sensations less distressing. "It's really all about the context of the situation, of the environment," Zeidan told LiveScience. "Meditation seems to have an overarching sense of attenuating that type of response."

Cultivating mindfulness

The practice known as mindfulness meditation involves sitting quietly and comfortably while breathing evenly. The idea is to clear the mind and focus the attention on the present.

Many studies have found that practicing meditation can reduce pain. Zeidan's work suggests you don't have to spend much time meditating to get the benefit: In a study published in March in the Journal of Pain, Zeidan and his colleagues reported that a half-hour of training per day for three days can significantly soothe pain, even when research participants aren't meditating.

In the new study, Zeidan wanted to find out what meditation does to change the brain's pain response. So he and his colleagues asked 15 volunteers to spend 30 minutes each day for four days learning to meditate. Before and after the training, the researchers scanned the volunteers' brains using magnetic resonance imaging.

During both before and after scans, each volunteer experienced alternative sensations of heat (120 degrees Fahrenheit, or 49 degrees Celsius) and neutral temperature (95 degrees F, or 35 degrees C) on his or her calf. After each 12-second temperature application, the volunteers ranked their pain by pushing a lever to the right for more pain and to the left for less. The lever position corresponded to a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 representing the greatest pain.

All in your head

The results are not yet published, but according to the Society for Neuroscience research abstract, meditation reduced people's perceptions of pain's unpleasantness by 57 percent. Volunteers also reported that pain was 40 percent less intense. [5 Painful Facts You Need to Know]

The volunteers' brains mirrored their altered perceptions, according to the abstract. Activity dropped in the thalamus, a deep brain area that relays sensory information from the body to the somatosensory cortex. The somatosensory cortex, located along the side of the brain above the ear, has specialized areas devoted to processing signals from specific body parts. In the meditation-practicing volunteers, the area of the somatosensory cortex linked to the calf was quieted.

Meanwhile, areas associated with pain modulation became more active. Those areas included the orbitofrontal cortex directly behind the eyes and the anterior cingulated cortex deep in the frontal region of the brain. The putamen, a structure buried in the center of the brain, and the nearby insula also showed more activity. Both structures have many functions, including control of movement, self-awareness and perception.

"The preliminary results are very interesting and promising," Zeidan said. The good news, he said, is that studies have shown that meditation's benefits occur rapidly, making it a realistic pain-relief option for people facing surgery or enduring injury.

"You don't necessarily need to be a monk to experience some of the benefits related to meditation," he said.

A Review of The Power of Conversational Hypnosis
Alpha Meditation Brainwave Entrainment Video
Can Anyone Have Lucid Dreams?

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2010

Create Isochronic Tones Using IsoMod Audacity Plug-in

There is now an easier way to create isochronic tones. A plug-in was developed
by Steve Daulton which you can download from this forum.post.

Installing the IsoMod plug-in

Once you have downloaded the plugin to your hard drive, copy it to your
plug-ins folder of the audacity program folder e.g C:\Program
Files\Audacity\Plug-Ins. Start up
audacity and it will be
available at the effects menu when you have generated a tone.

Creating an 10hz Alpha Wave Isochronic Tone with a 90hz Carier Frequency

1.    Generate a tone by clicking 'Generate' from the menu and selecting 'Tone,,,',

2.    Select 'Sine' for the Waveform, 90 for the 'Frequency/Hz', 0.6 for the 'Amplitude', and 600 for a 10 minute duration then click 'Generate Tone'

3.    Click 'Effects' from the menu and select 'Isomod'

4. You will be presented by the following configuration set up.

'Pulse Width' must be set to 50 to achieve an isochronic tone.

'Initial Modulation Frequency' and 'Final Modulation Frequency' is the isochronic beat you want to
target. They must be the same unless you are creating a ramp.

"Initial Modulation Depth' and 'Final Modulation Depth' must be set to 100 to get a pure isochronic
beat.

You can play around with 'Fade Time'. The lower the value the truer its isochronic waveform is. As
the value gets higher, the silence portion gets smaller. I find the value of 15 to be acceptable.

That's it, you now have an alpha isochronic beat.

Ramping the Isochronic Beat

IsoMod supports ramping but you can only create it one time either going from a high frequency to a lower frequency or from a lower brainwave frequency to a higher brainwave frequency. If you're designing an
isochronic tone which ramp more than one time, you need to create several tones then just 'stitch' them together.

As an example if we want to start with 10hz alpha brainwave then ramp to 4hzthetabrainwave then back again to alpha brainwave, you need create at least 4
isochronic tones. Details may be as follows:

1.    10hz = 6min
.    10hz to 4z ramp = 2min
.    4hz = 6min.
       4hz to 10hz ramp= 2min

2.     Create a 10hz tone
        Open another instance of audacity and
create 10hz tone for 2min. Ramp it down with IsoMod to 4hz
        Open another instance of audacity and
create a 6min 4hz tone
        Open another instance of audacity and
create a 4hz tone for 2min Ramp it up with IsoMod to 10hz

3. All you have to do now is copy and paste to
create a single file. You may however need to edit the waveform in the
'stitched' portion.

That's it! Have fun and may you reap the benefits that
isochronic tones can give you.