Thursday, January 10, 2013

~ Isochronic Tones and Brainwave Entrainment

Isochronic tones work by emitting sound at regular intervals. This excites the thalamus and causes the brain to duplicate the frequency of the Isochronic tones, changing its thought patterns.

Isochronic tones are regular beats of a single tone used for brainwave entrainment. Similar to monaural beats, the interference pattern that produces the beat is outside the brain so headphones are not required for entrainment to be effective. They differ from monaural beats, which are constant sine wave pulses rather than entirely separate pulses of a single tone. As the contrast between noise and silence is more pronounced than the constant pulses of monaural beats, the stimuli is stronger and has a greater effect on brain entrainment.

Binaural beats are not very noticeable because the modulation depth (the difference between loud and quiet) is 3 db, a two-to-one ratio. (Isochronic tones and mono beats easily have 50 db difference between loud and quiet, which is a 100,000-to-1 ratio). This means that binaural beats are unlikely to produce any significant entrainment because they don’t activate the thalamus. But they do have some hypnotic and relaxing effect by way of dissociation. You have to use headphones when listening to Binaural Beats, because the entrainment occurs by a third tone, that is created by 2 different frequencies, one in the left ear and the second in the right ear.

If you are looking for the most effective type of brainwave entrainment, Isochronic tones are the way to go. Isochronic Tones also use equal intensity tones, but the pulse speed is greater, causing the brain to synchronize with the rhythm. In 1999, Thomas Budzynski Ph.D. published a case in the Journal of Neurotherapy which showed that a group of 8 college students increased their GPA with the use of audio brainwave stimulation, and their GPA continued to increase even after the brainwave entrainment was finished.

It's important that the tones (beats) have an effect on the thalamus as it's belived to be a kind of a "switch".
The thalamus has multiple functions. It is generally believed to act as a relay between a variety of subcortical areas and the cerebral cortex. In particular, every sensory system (with the exception of the olfactory system) includes a thalamic nucleus that receives sensory signals and sends them to the associated primary cortical area.
Source: What does the Thalamus do
There are many ways to create Isochronic Tones and Binaural Beats, some add noice, nature sounds or meditative music. I prefer the pure isochronic tones, I find the added sound disturbing, I just like to focus on the beat of the tones in my brain. The Isochronic tones videos on my YouTube channel are pure, there is is only one frequency, no carrier tone, noice, music etc. The isochronic tones are created in Audacity, first a sine tone is created, then it is modulated with the plugin; Isomod, and then converted into mp3.

So, when it comes to Brainwave Entrainment you will find that there are many Binaural Beats available. Monaural beats are not so common. Isochronic tones are relatively new and are the tones I'm interested in, because of it's potential effect on the thalamus.

Most of the Isochronic Tones I upload on YouTube based on the 'Cross Reference List of Rife Frequencies', but not all of them.

About the original Rife Frequency List:
According to Dr. Royal R. Rife, every disease has a frequency. He found that certain frequencies can prevent the development of disease and that others would destroy disease.
The whole idea of traditional Rife therapy was to find the particular frequency to blow up an enemy virus or bacteria. This technology and philosophy was always based on single frequencies that were taken from old records of which frequencies had worked in the past for a given disease.

Scientific proof
There are not enough scientific studies about isochronic tones and it's effect (if any) in the brain and organs. Brainwave entrainment falls into the category of the alternative field or pseudoscience. I'm not a neuroscientist nor do I have any education in medicin, I don't know if isochronic tones works or not. And please always seek professional medical help before you turn to alternative healthcare.

DISCLAIMER
Brainwave Entrainment, Sound healing, Isochronic Tones, etc is not an evidence-based scientific method.

About Sound healing
Sound healing - WikipediA