Binaural Beats A Quick History

The Origins Of Binaural Beats

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Heinrich Wilhelm Dove discovered binaural beats in 1839. While research about them continued after that, the subject remained something of a scientific curiosity until 134 years later, with the publishing of Gerald Oster’s article “Auditory Beats in the Brain” (Scientific American, 1973). Oster’s article identified and assembled the scattered islands of relevant research since Dove, offering fresh insight (and new laboratory findings) to research on binaural beats.

In particular, Oster saw binaural beats as a powerful tool for cognitive and neurological research, addressing questions such as how animals locate sounds in their three-dimensional environment, and also the remarkable ability of animals to pick out and focus on specific sounds in a sea of noise (which is known as the “cocktail party effect”).

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