Cream-coloured headphones resting on a weathered wooden table by a window in soft golden light

Binaural beats: do brainwaves entrain?

ByRaymond Hackland

Evidence label: Well studied (the binaural beat as a hearing effect)

Evidence label: Early evidence (effects on attention, memory and anxiety ratings)

Evidence label: Speculative (brainwave entrainment and “tune your brain to X Hz” claims)

“Well studied” means that the beat itself is a well-described illusion of hearing, made in the brain. The behavioural studies are many but mixed, so they are Early evidence. Claims that the beats put your brain into a chosen rhythm or state are Speculative: the brain-recording studies disagree. Nothing in this article is a health claim.

Author: Raymond Hackland · Last reviewed: 21 October 2026 · Reading time: about 10 minutes

In short

What this is: Play one tone in your left ear and a slightly different one in your right, and you hear a third, pulsing tone that exists only inside your head. That is a binaural beat. Popular claims say these beats can shift your brainwaves into “alpha” or “theta” and change how you feel. This article looks at what the beat is, what brain recordings show, and what the pooled studies on attention, memory and anxiety do and don’t support.

What the evidence says: The beat is real: it arises where the signals from the two ears meet in the brainstem, and it produces a measurable brain response [1, 2]. Whether it drives the brain’s wider rhythms is another matter. Of 14 EEG studies in a 2023 systematic review, five supported this “entrainment”, eight did not, and one was mixed [1]. Meta-analyses find medium-sized average effects on attention, memory and anxiety ratings [3, 4], but careful individual studies have found nothing [5, 6], and the studies differ widely [1, 4, 7].

What it means for your practice: Binaural beats are an interesting hearing illusion, and listening to them may feel pleasant. The evidence doesn’t show that they put your brain into a chosen state, and none of these studies tested them alongside Qigong or the Six Healing Sounds.

What science says

Label for this section: 🟢 Well studied (the hearing effect) · 🟡 Early evidence (behavioural effects) · 🟠 Speculative (entrainment), as marked in each part.

What a binaural beat is

Label: 🟢 Well studied.

Suppose your right ear hears a tone of 400 Hz through headphones and your left ear hears 420 Hz. You don’t hear two separate tones. You hear one tone that seems to sit inside your head and pulses 20 times a second, the difference between the two [1]. Nothing in the air pulses at 20 Hz. The beat is made in the brain, where the signals from the two ears are first combined, in a brainstem structure called the superior olivary complex. That structure normally helps you tell where a sound comes from [1].

The effect has limits, first measured in the mid-20th century [1]:

  • Both tones need to be below about 1,000 Hz, and the beat is clearest with tones around 400 Hz.
  • The two tones can differ by up to about 30 Hz. With bigger differences you hear two separate tones.
  • Below a difference of about 3 Hz, the sound seems to rotate from ear to ear; up to about 20 Hz it pulses in loudness; above that it sounds rough.

The beat needs headphones, so that each ear hears only its own tone [1]. If the two tones are played together through speakers, or into the same ear, the sound waves mix in the air and produce an ordinary acoustic beat instead: a real pulsing in loudness that a microphone could record [1, 5].

The binaural beat was first described in 1839, by H. W. Dove, and for over a century it was treated as a curiosity [1]. In 1973 Oster brought the research together in Scientific American and suggested practical uses [1, 8]. According to a 2023 review, this sparked interest both in science and “in certain pseudoscientific contexts”, and led to programmes that use binaural beats to try to enhance thinking [1].

The brain does respond to the beat

Label: 🟢 Well studied.

When you listen to any regularly pulsing sound, the hearing pathways produce a matching electrical response that EEG can pick up. Researchers call it an auditory steady-state response [1]. In 2005 Schwarz and Taylor showed that a 40 Hz binaural beat produces such a response too. They described it as a response “to a signal that is not present in the stimulus, but generated within the brain” [2].

This is real, and it is useful for hearing research. But it is a response of the hearing system to a rhythm it is processing. The popular claim is much bigger: that the beat makes the brain’s wider rhythms follow it, and so changes your state of mind. That is the “brainwave entrainment” hypothesis [1].

Do brainwaves entrain? The EEG studies

Label: 🟠 Speculative (entrainment of brain rhythms by binaural beats).

Brain rhythms, measured by EEG, are grouped into frequency bands such as theta, alpha and beta. These bands are linked with different states, and binaural beats can be set to the same rates. The entrainment hypothesis says that a theta beat should increase theta activity, an alpha beat alpha activity, and so on [1].

In 2023, Ingendoh and colleagues at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany systematically reviewed the EEG studies that tested this in healthy adults [1]. They found 14:

  • Five reported results in line with entrainment, for the theta, alpha or gamma bands.
  • Eight reported no change in the matching EEG band. None of the studies using beta-rate beats found entrainment.
  • One was mixed [1].

The studies were too different to pool. Most were small studies of young adults, and in the authors’ quality check 12 of the 16 studies they assessed had no control group [1]. Every study that embedded the beats in pink noise, a soft background hiss, found no entrainment [1]. The authors wrote that the majority of negative results “casts serious doubts” on whether the hypothesis is tenable. They also noted that differences in how EEG was measured and analysed may explain part of the disagreement, so no clear verdict is possible yet [1].

One of the negative studies shows how such a test works. López-Caballero and Escera played 14 young adults binaural and ordinary acoustic beats at five rates, from theta to high gamma, for three minutes each, while they watched a silent film [5]. They found no change in EEG power in the matching bands, for either kind of beat, and no change in heart rate or skin conductance. Their title sums it up: “a failure to enhance EEG power and emotional arousal” [5].

Attention, memory and mood: the meta-analyses

Label: 🟡 Early evidence.

A separate question is whether people think or feel differently while listening, whatever the brain rhythms do.

  • 2019, cognition, anxiety and pain. Garcia-Argibay and colleagues pooled 22 studies (35 effect sizes) [3]. They found an overall medium effect (Hedges’ g = 0.45, a standard measure of the size of a difference). Listening before a task seemed to work better than only during it, longer listening did better, and embedding the beats in noise was not necessary [3]. The authors concluded that binaural beats are “an effective way to affect cognition”, and that the effect depends on the beat frequency, the time spent listening and when the listening takes place [3].
  • 2023, memory and attention. Basu and Banerjee pooled 15 studies (31 effect sizes) and also found a medium overall effect (g = 0.40) [4]. But their systematic review of the same studies found “conflicting results”, especially for theta and beta beats, and they called for “more research with robust study designs” [4].
  • A careful null result. In three experiments, Robison and colleagues tested 16 Hz (beta) beats during a long attention task [6]. The first experiment found slightly faster responses, but the statistics could not clearly tell this apart from no effect. A second found a smaller decline in attention over time, but combining the two experiments gave “rather strong evidence against” the idea that these beats improve sustained attention, and a third experiment found no effect on pupil size [6].

Two points help in reading these numbers. First, a pooled average can hide large differences between studies, as the 2023 memory-and-attention review found [4]. Second, an effect on how people perform or feel doesn’t show that brainwaves entrained. The review of EEG studies notes that many applied studies assumed entrainment without measuring it [1]. A pleasant or novel sound, expectation, or simply listening to something instead of silence could all play a part.

Anxiety around medical procedures

Label: 🟡 Early evidence (studies in clinical settings; very mixed).

Much of the newer research is in hospitals and dental clinics, where people often feel anxious before or during a procedure.

  • A 2025 meta-analysis of 15 randomised trials around surgery found lower anxiety scores with binaural beats than with blank audio, and also, by a smaller amount, than with audio without binaural beats [7]. But the results varied enormously between trials (I² above 90%, where higher means more disagreement), and the confidence interval for the comparison with other audio reached almost to zero (−1.99 to −0.03), so the true difference could be small [7]. The authors called the approach “promising”, noted the substantial differences between trials and called for standardised protocols and more high-quality trials [7].
  • A 2026 meta-analysis of theta-beat trials could not pool its anxiety or cognition results at all, because the trials were too different from each other [9].
  • The hub’s article 432 Hz vs 440 Hz: history, myths and evidence describes one such dental trial, in which binaural beats and 432 Hz music both reduced anxiety compared with white noise, equally.

Pain has also been studied, but reviews rate that evidence as low or very low in certainty [9, 10]. These clinical studies tell us about short-term ratings in particular medical settings. They are not advice, and they don’t test the claims made for brainwave states.

How sure is all this?

  • Solid: the binaural beat is a real illusion of hearing, produced in the brainstem, with well-mapped limits; the hearing system produces a measurable response to it [1, 2].
  • Unsettled, leaning against: that binaural beats make the brain’s wider rhythms follow them. Most EEG studies are negative, and the field has no agreed way to measure it [1, 5].
  • Mixed: effects on attention, memory and anxiety ratings. Pooled averages are positive, careful single studies are sometimes null, and the studies differ widely [3, 4, 6, 7, 9].

Our article Study types explained: from anecdote to meta-analysis explains why a pooled average and a single null study can both be true.

What tradition says

Label for this section: 🔵 Tradition only · 📜 Documented history.

Binaural beats come from 19th- and 20th-century European and American hearing research [1, 8]. They are a modern laboratory finding, not part of Chinese tradition. The Six Healing Sounds use your own breath and voice. In traditional theory each sound is paired with an organ, and those pairings are traditional theory, not anatomy (see Liu Zi Jue: where the Six Healing Sounds come from). Classical Chinese thought also has its own ideas about tones and the inner life, explained in The Chinese five tones and the Five Phases. Neither speaks of brain rhythms, and neither should be read as an early version of brainwave entrainment.

Where popular claims go beyond the evidence

Label for this section: 🟠 Speculative.

  • “Ten minutes of theta beats puts your brain into a meditative theta state.” EEG studies disagree on whether beats change brain rhythms at all, and most find no change [1, 5]. No study we found compared a “theta track” with Qigong practice.
  • “Pick the frequency and you pick the state: alpha for calm, beta for focus, delta for sleep.” This assumes entrainment, and then that each band means one state. The first step is unproven [1], and beta beats in particular showed no entrainment in the reviewed EEG studies [1].
  • “It works through any speaker.” A binaural beat needs headphones. Through speakers both ears hear both tones, and you get an ordinary acoustic beat instead [1].
  • “The beats are tuned to healing frequencies such as 528 Hz or 432 Hz.” The beat is the difference between the two tones, at most about 30 Hz, not the tones themselves. A track can use 432 or 528 Hz as its tones, since both are below about 1,000 Hz, but that says nothing about what the beat does. The “healing frequency” claims have their own article: Solfeggio frequencies: where they come from and what the evidence says.
  • “The studies prove it.” Some pooled studies show average effects on tasks and ratings [3, 4]. They don’t show that brainwaves entrained, and careful single studies have found no effect [5, 6].

How this relates to the Six Healing Sounds, Qigong and neigong

Label for this section: 🟡 Early evidence (EEG during Liu Zi Jue practice) · 🟠 Speculative (brainwave entrainment).

If you look for Qigong or meditation music, you may come across binaural-beat tracks. Here is what this research does and doesn’t tell us about them.

  • Not part of my practice as the main site describes it. The main site’s description of my immersions lists “tuning forks, Solfeggio tones, live sound and curated instrumental playlists” [11]. Binaural beats are not among them.
  • Your own voice makes no binaural beat. In the Six Healing Sounds you hear your own voice and the room around you with both ears together. A binaural beat needs a different tone in each ear through headphones [1].
  • Ordinary beats you can hear. Two tones sounding together slightly out of tune, for example from two tuning forks, produce an acoustic beat in the room: a real pulsing you can hear and measure [1, 5]. It is physics, not a brain-state technique. Our article Tuning forks: from the doctor’s bag to the practice room explains how forks sound.
  • EEG during the practice itself. In a small German study, 20 people with regular Qigong experience practised Liu Zi Jue and Wu Qin Xi for two 15-minute blocks each, with EEG at rest before and after [12]. After 30 minutes of Liu Zi Jue, alpha activity had increased (after a dip at 15 minutes). The authors suggest that the attention and breathing of each practice may explain the different patterns [12]. There was no separate control group, and the study tested the practice, not binaural beats. Our article Six Sounds in the lab: what a 2026 brain study did and didn’t show (coming soon) looks at another brain study of the six sounds.
  • Slow breathing is a different topic. Slow breathing has its own body of research, described in Slow breathing and heart rate variability: what actually happens in your body. That research is about breath and heart rhythm, not about an imposed brain rhythm.

Both kinds of knowledge have their place here. The research shows a fascinating trick of hearing and a brain that responds to it, but no reliable switch for brain states. Practice offers something else: attention to your own breath and voice, which no track can do for you.

If you have a health condition, please read Who should be careful with breathing practices before you start.

Resonance Heritage Qi is a personal, music-assisted practice inspired by Liu Zi Jue: connected to it, not a replacement for the traditional form or for study with a teacher of that tradition. No study has tested it, and we make no claims about its effects. Where we use music, tuning forks or particular tones in sessions, these are aesthetic choices and an invitation to listen closely, not health claims. Claims about specific “healing frequencies” are covered in Solfeggio frequencies: where they come from and what the evidence says.

Enjoyed this article? Get my free practice guide to the Six Healing Sounds. Just sign up below, confirm your email, and it’s on its way.

Sources

  1. Ingendoh RM, Posny ES, Heine A, 2023. Binaural beats to entrain the brain? A systematic review of the effects of binaural beat stimulation on brain oscillatory activity, and the implications for psychological research and intervention. PLoS One 18(5):e0286023. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286023
  2. Schwarz DW, Taylor P, 2005. Human auditory steady state responses to binaural and monaural beats. Clinical Neurophysiology 116(3):658–668. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2004.09.014
  3. Garcia-Argibay M, Santed MA, Reales JM, 2019. Efficacy of binaural auditory beats in cognition, anxiety, and pain perception: a meta-analysis. Psychological Research 83(2):357–372. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1066-8
  4. Basu S, Banerjee B, 2023. Potential of binaural beats intervention for improving memory and attention: insights from meta-analysis and systematic review. Psychological Research 87(4):951–963. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-022-01706-7
  5. López-Caballero F, Escera C, 2017. Binaural beat: a failure to enhance EEG power and emotional arousal. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 11:557. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00557
  6. Robison MK, Obulasetty M, Blais C, Wingert KM, Brewer GA, 2022. The effect of binaural beat stimulation on sustained attention. Psychological Research 86(3):808–822. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01524-3
  7. Xiong J, Jiang X, Cai B, Zhao L, Zhang Q, Luo J, 2025. Binaural beats for perioperative anxiety and pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Complementary Therapies in Medicine 95:103299. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctim.2025.103299
  8. Oster G, 1973. Auditory beats in the brain. Scientific American 229(4):94–102. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1073-94
  9. Fatima I, Zaidi S, Sundus H, Alam MF, Parveen H, Khan SA, 2026. Efficacy of theta binaural beat therapy on pain, cognition and anxiety in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Explore (NY) 22(5):103471. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2026.103471
  10. Shamsi F, Azadinia F, Shaygan M, 2024. Does brain entrainment using binaural auditory beats affect pain perception in acute and chronic pain?: a systematic review. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies 24(1):34. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-024-04339-y
  11. Resonance Heritage Qi. Main website: Immersions section, accessed 22 October 2026. https://resonanceheritageqi.com/
  12. Henz D, Schöllhorn WI, 2018. Temporal courses in EEG theta and alpha activity in the dynamic Health Qigong techniques Wu Qin Xi and Liu Zi Jue. Frontiers in Psychology 8:2291. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02291

Source quality note: [1] is a peer-reviewed, open-access systematic review of EEG studies; it is also our source for the basic hearing facts and the history, which it cites from the original studies (Dove 1839, Licklider et al. 1950, Perrott and Nelson 1969). [2], [5] and [6] are peer-reviewed laboratory studies; [5] and [6] report null results. [3], [4], [7] and [9] are peer-reviewed meta-analyses, and [10] is a systematic review that could not pool its studies; [4], [7] and [9] report large differences between studies, while [3] reports a consistent average effect; [9] and [10] rate the certainty of evidence as low or very low. [8] is a magazine article by a scientist, cited only for its historical role; we did not read it. [11] is our own website. [12] is a small peer-reviewed study of Liu Zi Jue practice with no separate control group. We read the full text of [1], [5] and [12] and the abstracts of the others.

Disclaimer

This article is for general education only. It is not medical advice and does not replace diagnosis or treatment by a doctor or other qualified health professional. Qigong and the Six Healing Sounds are traditional practices; we make no claims that they cure, treat or prevent any illness. If you have a health condition, are pregnant, or are unsure whether a practice suits you, please talk to your doctor first.

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