The Effects of Binaural Beats on the Brain's Functional Connectivity

Poster Session B - Sunday, April 14, 2024, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Emily Fenton¹ (fentone18@students.ecu.edu), Sunghan Kim¹; ¹East Carolina University

Music and rhythmic tones have been used historically to alter mood and cognitive performance. Recent research shows that music is proven to help manage stress and change brain functions to the same extent as medicine. Binaural Beats (BB) are rhythmic tones used to alter one’s mental state; BB are an illusionary, perceived third tone created by the brain when two different but similar pure tones (frequencies) are played in separate ears through earphones. This difference in tones is small, and cannot be transcribed by the brain and is instead tuned, making a completely new third tone. This experiment aims to answer if BB stimulation can elicit unique functional connectivity (FC) patterns in the brain by utilizing electroencephalography (EEG) data and graph theory analysis (GTA) in analyzing FC between anatomically separate regions of the brain. The hypothesis is that a singular 10-minute session of BB listening through earphones will modulate the brain’s FC. After BB stimulation, indications of increased and decreased cognitive performance between BB frequency groups should be seen. A distinguishable pattern of FC elicited by BB stimulation will be determined for both BB frequency groups. Noticeable change between subjects pre and post-BB EEG recording sessions is expected, more so with the lower frequency BB group; changes in state of balance are assessed using GTA. Differences and similarities in FC and GTA results are also expected when comparing BB frequency groups. A strong association between right and left temporal regions in GTA post-BB can be expected to be seen.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Working memory