WarpMyMind

So after a long time from the sight, I've become interested again, and I'm looking at something that has always confused me. I checked the FAQ but didn't see anything useful there on it, and tried searching but again, didn't come up with anything specificity relevant.

A glossary of terms would be most helpful. What is an Induction versus a Training, a Subliminal versus a Binaural. I'm not familiar with a lot of these terms and would find it helpful if someone could drop a link, or hit the major ones.

I actually like the idea. Some of the more complicated things about hypnosis still puzzle me a bit from time to time, so if an expert of the craft put out something of the sort it would be very helpful.

An induction is simply a file that will put you into trance - nothing else. All files here, that have a goal - that make you do some kind of thing - always start with an induction. A typical hypnosis file anywhere would consist of Induction, Body and Awakening - in that order. The Body is the part of the file that conditions you to perform certain things - the goal of the file.

A training file is a file consisting of Induction, Body and Awakening - designed to train you to do or experience something - usually something about yourself, that you would like to change permanently. The opposite of a trainer would be a trigger - in that a trigger file causes you to change momentarily whenever you are triggered by the trigger word or action.

Subliminal files try to give you suggestions in a covert way - either by quickly flashing messages on a computer screen or by having a musical track (or noise) with softly spoken suggestions - barely audible - underneath. The jury is out on whether subliminals are any good or not, by the way.

Binaural beats is a way of putting some sounds into a recording that puts your brain into theta state. Your normal waking brainwaves are alpha. When you enter trance they change to theta. The frequency of theta waves is about 6-7 Hz. So by having a tone of 6-7 Hz playing in the background it stimulates your brain into going into that state.

A FAQ would be a good thing, but these things are frequently discussed here in the forums. Just ask if there's anything you'd like to know.

Cardigan

cardigan wrote:
Binaural beats is a way of putting some sounds into a recording that puts your brain into theta state. Your normal waking brainwaves are alpha. When you enter trance they change to theta. The frequency of theta waves is about 6-7 Hz. So by having a tone of 6-7 Hz playing in the background it stimulates your brain into going into that state.

Binaural beats are pulses that you seem to hear as the result of hearing a different tone in each ear. Each note has a frequency and the combination of 2 notes of similar frequencies creates a kind of "interference pattern" in your brain. In practical terms, the tones seem to pulse... it is like an optical illusion in audio. The pulse is of a frequency equal to the difference between the frequencies of the 2 notes. Binaural beats can be useful for affecting brainwave frequencies as you describe, but any pulsing tone (or indeed light) can achieve a similar effect.

Sorry if that sounds pendantic, but I always use tremolo myself and it irks me just a little when people comment on my "binaural beats". In my view, binaurals are rather limited and tremolo is far more useful!

To clear up this issue about BBeats once an for all:
All sounds that have tone are made up of a stacking of tones, known as overtones. The principle tone is the one that is the lowest. For example:
a tone of 100 hz has the principle of 100 hz with the overtones of 200 hz, 300, 400 etc.

However! If you remove the principle and have a tone consisting of 200 hz, 300, 400 etc. The brain will still interpret the tone, and hear it as 100 hz.

The point of a BBeat is to produce tones in the brain which are normally out of the hearing range of a subject. This is done through seperate tones in each ear, the brain then splits the difference and a tone of say, 10 hz, is heard.

This is extremely relaxing and can induce trance in many subjects.

I agree with both posters. I just didn't want to go into too much of a technical debate. Binaural beats are great to add in a file. I use my own voice as the basis of the binaural beat. That is: I record my file. Then I take out the hissing from the microphone. Then I mark all of the now clean soundtrack of my voice - by going Ctrl-A, and I use the brainwave function in Cool Edit Pro to generate binaural beats based on my voice. The finished track will then have my speak plus echoes 7 Hz apart in each ear, thus generating the binaural beat - without having to mix in a separate tone or soundtrack or anything. I just use my own voice, which gives my voice a cool echo'ey quality! :-)

Cardigan

Thing is, see, that if you just slap a 300Hz tone on top of a 303Hz tone, both in mono, you get an interference pattern which makes 'em pulse. Without bothering about that left ear / right ear stuff. This suggests that "binaural beats" are nothing more than the brain mixing what the left ear is hearing with what the right ear is hearing, same as it usually does. Do we know what this means, class?

That if you are using a pulsing tone to affect brainwave frequencies, then we can cut out the binaural stuff and introduce a "third ear". By putting a 300Hz tone on top of a 303Hz tone and then adding 306Hz tone, you get pulses at 2 different frequencies, 3Hz and 6Hz!

How do I get this back on topic? If there is a terminology guide, it should be researched and presented, and all questions/ discussions should be kept elsewhere. Otherwise, we will have more cooks than broth and the result will be confusion. I'd be happy to give it a bash, if that's what people want, but I'm sure there are people out there better suited to the task...

Interesting.

Start by examining this:

Schwarz DW, Taylor P.

Department of Surgery (Otolaryngology) and Brain Research Centre, University of British Columbia, 2211 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 2B5. dschw@interchange.ubc.ca

OBJECTIVE: Binaural beat sensations depend upon a central combination of two different temporally encoded tones, separately presented to the two ears. We tested the feasibility to record an auditory steady state evoked response (ASSR) at the binaural beat frequency in order to find a measure for temporal coding of sound in the human EEG. METHODS: We stimulated each ear with a distinct tone, both differing in frequency by 40Hz, to record a binaural beat ASSR. As control, we evoked a beat ASSR in response to both tones in the same ear. We band-pass filtered the EEG at 40Hz, averaged with respect to stimulus onset and compared ASSR amplitudes and phases, extracted from a sinusoidal non-linear regression fit to a 40Hz period average. RESULTS: A 40Hz binaural beat ASSR was evoked at a low mean stimulus frequency (400Hz) but became undetectable beyond 3kHz. Its amplitude was smaller than that of the acoustic beat ASSR, which was evoked at low and high frequencies. Both ASSR types had maxima at fronto-central leads and displayed a fronto-occipital phase delay of several ms. CONCLUSIONS: The dependence of the 40Hz binaural beat ASSR on stimuli at low, temporally coded tone frequencies suggests that it may objectively assess temporal sound coding ability. The phase shift across the electrode array is evidence for more than one origin of the 40Hz oscillations. SIGNIFICANCE: The binaural beat ASSR is an evoked response, with novel diagnostic potential, to a signal that is not present in the stimulus, but generated within the brain.

Oh and bare in mind this (if you can decode it):

The sensation of binaural beats is believed to originate in the superior olivary nucleus, a part of the brain stem. They appear to be related to the brain's ability to locate the sources of sounds in three dimensions and to track moving sounds, which also involves inferior colliculus (IC) neurons. Regarding entrainment, the study of rhythmicity provides insights into the understanding of temporal information processing in the human brain. Auditory rhythms rapidly entrain motor responses into stable steady synchronization states below and above conscious perception thresholds. Activated regions include primary sensorimotor and cingulate areas, bilateral opercular premotor areas, bilateral SII, ventral prefrontal cortex, and, subcortically, anterior insula, putamen, and thalamus. Within the cerebellum, vermal regions and anterior hemispheres ipsilateral to the movement became significantly activated. Tracking temporal modulations additionally activated predominantly right prefrontal, anterior cingulate, and intraparietal regions as well as posterior cerebellar hemispheres. A study of aphasic subjects who had a severe stroke versus normal subjects showed that the aphasic subject could not hear the binaural beats whereas the normal subjects could.

I couldn't have said it better myself.