Research Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · 2023
Binaural Beats to Entrain the Brain? EEG Review
The marketing word is “entrainment.” The EEG literature is mixed. A 2023 systematic review is the right cold water: some studies see oscillatory change; many do not; methods wander.
If binaural beats “entrain” cortex the way a metronome tags a drummer, EEG should show it. This review asks that question of the published electrophysiology and finds heterogeneity — different bands, montages, statistics, and definitions of success.
Who, where, when
Ingendoh, Posny, and Heine. PMID 37205669. A systematic review, not a new experiment.
What the work actually did
They collect EEG studies of binaural-beat stimulation and ask whether brain oscillatory power or connectivity reliably follows the beat frequency. The honest summary is: not reliably, not uniformly, not with a single recipe.
What it does not prove
Absence of a clean EEG lock is not proof that listeners feel nothing. Behavioral and first-person reports live on a different layer. Do not collapse “no average spectral peak” into “the beat is imaginary.” Oster’s percept does not require a textbook frequency-following response.
How to use this page
Keep “entrainment” as a hypothesis, not a brand. Design sessions for attention and rest. Do not promise a spectrogram.
Related
Editorial reading of published research. The official paper is authoritative. Not medical advice. Not a claim that consumer audio recreates a trial protocol.