Five minutes of binaural beats gets people in the mood to meditate

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2026-04-02 05:00

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Playing specific tones through headphones could help people increase their calmness and focus, finds a psychology researcher in Fiji. Binaural beats are when different sound frequencies are played to each ear, creating an audio illusion of a pulsing sound – and previous research has shown they can affect moods. In this study, the researcher showed that 6 Hz binaural beats listened to by 101 Fijian university students for five minutes in a 'real-world' context tended to increase their reported calmness and focus. However the researcher warns of some limitations to the study, including that some participants may have previously known about binaural beats and so expected the experiment to improve their mood.