Running head: HOW BINAURAL BEATS CAN HELP

How Binaural Beats Can Help Students Write

Justin Mays
Nevada State College

HOW BINAURAL BEATS CAN HELP STUDENTS WRITE

How Binaural Beats Can Help Students Write

As a student goes through their college career they are asked to write many
papers and essays using different formats that cover a lot of information. The ability to
understand the topic and be able to translate in their own words and transfer it down to
paper is both an art and a science. Students are offered many avenues of help such as
writing tutors, writing workshops and writing centers just to name a few, and often are
able to improve their writing skills within their range of necessary knowledge. This paper
is going to explain some tools that will help students with writing by using a sound
collective that is called Binaural Beats. The sounds interact within the mind by using
various frequencies that manipulate the brainwaves and help the brain to act in specific
ways. There have been many experiments using brainwave manipulation over the last
couple of decades and have had some very interesting results. This paper should be able
to scratch the surface and introduce the findings of a few experiments that have been
conducted so far.
Literature Review
The first article that will help explain the use of Binaural Beast is titled A
Quantitative Electroencephalographic Study of Meditation and Binaural Beat
Entrainment. This article discusses an experiment that consisted of having seasoned and
novice meditation enthusiasts listen to the beats and then describe their experience. Both
sets of participants listened to the same sounds for the same length of time and had very
different outcomes. When the researchers interviewed the seasoned enthusiasts about
their experience they expressed that there was not noticeable change to their session
however, when the novice enthusiasts it was a very different story. The novice group

HOW BINAURAL BEATS CAN HELP STUDENTS WRITE

explained that they felt feeling waves of energy, blissful experiences and connections
with the universe. (Christina, et al., 2011)(pg 351355). The researchers found that the
seasoned participants had practiced blocking out the outside world thus rendering the
beats useless. As novice meditaters the subjects were not able to block out the world
around them thus allowing the beats to affect their brainwaves and helped them reach
peace within themselves. That study shows that Binaural beats can affect the brain in
ways that are still being researched. Students have a lot of stress on them and sometimes
find it hard to find peace in a hectic world that surrounds college. The ability to place
ones self in a state of peace would greatly improve the level of stress the students go
through. In a slightly different study titled A High-Density EEG Investigation into
Steady State Binaural Beat Stimulation the researchers wanted to see if personality traits
could be manipulated with the use of Binaural beats. At the end of the study they found
that the beats could not change someones personality, however the data that they
compiled showed that test subjects could concentrate on the tasks at a higher level then
without the beats. Students have a large amount of stress on them everyday and it can
sometimes bring down their performance and bring down their grade. If the Binaural
beats can help a person reach a level of peace then they should be slightly less stressed
after a beats session because they have lowered their anxiety levels. As explained it the
article titled A prospective, randomized, controlled study examining binaural beat audio
and pre-operative anxiety in patients undergoing general anesthesia for day case surgery
the researchers explain Significantly fewer participants recorded an increase in anxiety
in the Binaural Group than in the Audio Group or the No Intervention
Group(Padmanabhan, Hildreth, and Laws 2005) (pg874877). This study clearly

HOW BINAURAL BEATS CAN HELP STUDENTS WRITE

showed that Binaural beats lower the level of anxiety in humans before a stressful
situation. Now that research shows Binaural beats can help students relax its time to
examine how the beats affect students when it come to making that higher grade and
producing more polished works. One research study titled Alpha Brainwave
Entrainment as a Cognitive Performance Activator gives some insight into this concept.
The article discusses how the binaural beats interact with the brainwaves in the
participants. The researchers explain that during the experiment they found that "A 10.2
Hz brainwave entrainment procedure has a significant effect in the cognitive area."
(Cruceanu & Rotarescu 2013)(Pg249-261) This means that the cognitive processes can be
affected by the use of the beats. When the cognitive area of the brain are activated they
information is more effectually stored and categorized which allows for better retention
and easier recall.
Methods
The ability to conduct a large research study on this subject is out of reach for the
researcher of this paper; however there are a few ways to find out how Binaural beats
interact with the brainwaves of a test subject. The first method of examination will
consist of two participants picking the odd numbers out of a random list ranging from 120. The time and accuracy of the choices will be recorded from both subjects, then one
subject will meditate for 20 minutes with no Binaural beats and the other will meditate
for the same amount of time while listening to the beats. Once the 20 minutes are up each
subject will then pick the odd numbers again and the two times and correct answers will
be recorded and compared. This test will be conducted three times to make sure there is a
best two out of three sample. The next experiment will consist of interviews of 2-4

HOW BINAURAL BEATS CAN HELP STUDENTS WRITE

students to find out how they deal with stress before tests. This will give a good control
sample to build on. It will be asked that half of the subjects listen to calm music and the
others will listen to the beats, both for 20 minutes. A second interview of the subjects will
then happen after the stressful event. The information will then be compiled and
compared to itself and the first experiment, which will hopefully show that when using
the Binaural beats one can perform at a higher success rate.
Discussion
Helping students to produce writing at a higher quality is the point on this
research study but also it is to see if every day stress levels can be lowered in the
students lives. Being able to concentrate on the task at hand is very important however if
there is no relaxation between stressful events it will be harder to accomplish those tasks.
This research is designed to find out if a 20-minute session of listening to Binaural beats
can lower the stress level of the student and therefore allow them to more easily
concentrate on their task which is at this point writing. When a human brain is dealing
with stress they are not able to be very creative or concise, thats why the study also looks
into the quality of the writing. When the beats interact with the brainwaves they allow for
theyre to be more retention and recall giving a solid base to build upon. When a solid
base is formed it is easier to grow in a positive way thus producing higher quality works
of writing. Being able to concentrate on the task, understand what they need to do and
being able to do so is what students need help with. With the research and experiments
that will be conducted the final composed evidence should show that the use of Binaural
beats in 20 to 30 minute sessions do in fact assist the students in such matters as writing,
stress management and personal growth in the intellectual areas of student life.

HOW BINAURAL BEATS CAN HELP STUDENTS WRITE

References
Goodin, P., Ciorciari, J., Baker, K., Carrey, A., Harper, M., & Kaufman, J. (2012). A
High-Density EEG Investigation into Steady State Binaural Beat
Stimulation. Plos ONE, 7(4), 1-8. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034789
Chuter, E. E., Allan, M. M., & Laws, D. D. (2007). A pilot study comparing reduction of
anxiety by binaural beat audio and patient-selected music in the pre-operative
period. Anaesthesia, 62(3), 310. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2044.2006.04944_12.x
Padmanabhan, R. R., Hildreth, A. J., & Laws, D. D. (2005). A prospective, randomised,
controlled study examining binaural beat audio and pre-operative anxiety in
patients undergoing general anaesthesia for day case surgery.Anaesthesia, 60(9),
874-877. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2044.2005.04287.x
Lavallee, C. F., Koren, S. A., & Persinger, M. A. (2011). A Quantitative
Electroencephalographic Study of Meditation and Binaural Beat
Entrainment. Journal Of Alternative & Complementary Medicine, 17(4), 351-355.
doi:10.1089/acm.2009.0691
CRUCEANU, V. D., & ROTARESCU, V. S. (2013). ALPHA BRAINWAVE
ENTRAINMENT AS A COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE
ACTIVATOR. Cognitie, Creier, Comportament/Cognition, Brain,