Our audio technology provides you with a series of uniquely crafted pulsed tones that, simply by listening with headphones while relaxing, will stimulate and ‘entrain’ your mind to have a profound effect on your brain’s performance over time.
At it’s simplest, think of it like ‘neural exercise’ combined with ‘effortless meditation’ – it both stimulates your cognitive function and relaxes you at the same time.
You will receive all the benefits of the most advanced meditators, without all the effort or need to become a new-age guru. This page provides you with a detailed understanding of the science behind properly engineered brainwave technology.
Entrainment is a principle of physics. It is defined as the synchronization of two or more rhythmic cycles. The principles of entrainment appear in chemistry, neurology, biology, pharmacology, medicine and more. While working on the design of the pendulum clock in 1656, Dutch scientist Christian Huygens found that if he placed two unsynchronized clocks side by side on a wall, they would slowly synchronize to each other. In fact, the synchronization was so precise not even mechanical intervention could calibrate them more accurately. More recently, audio entrainment gained recognition and awareness through Mozart’s classical music. The concept of the “Mozart effect” was described by French researcher, Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis, in his 1991 book – “Pourquoi Mozart?” (Why Mozart?). He used the music of Mozart in his efforts to “retrain” the ear, and believed that listening to the music presented at differing frequencies helped the ear, and promoted healing and the development of the brain.
At any point in time during the day, your brain will be operating at one or more of the following ‘brainwave’ states:
What do we mean by ‘brainwaves’?
‘Brainwaves’ are produced as the billions of neurons in our brains transmit action potentials down their axons to the synapses where they trigger the release of neurotransmitters. These action potentials are essentially electrical charges that are passed from neuron to neuron.
By placing sensors on the scalp through the use of electroencephalograph technology (an EEG machine), researchers can detect not the individual firings of neurons—they are far too small and numerous to differentiate—but the sum total of this electrical activity, dubbed ‘brainwaves’ for their cyclical nature as shown in the diagram above.
Do we get the most out of our brainwaves?
One of the problems with modern society is that we tend to ‘drive’ our minds in such a way that our brainwaves remain in the Beta level seen in the diagram above. We live in a continually stressed out state of what we refer to as “Beta frazzle”. Most people tend to rush around, think too much, multi-task and frequently overload their minds with stressful thoughts. At the other end of the spectrum, some people hardly use their minds or challenge themselves at all. Unfortunately most people have very little natural control over their dominant brainwave state and hence can’t easily access the significant benefits provided by the other brainwave levels seen in the diagram above (Alpha, Theta or Delta).
Properly engineered brainwave technology, however, can influence your brainwaves by providing an audio stimulus that, so long as the necessary conditions are met, can guide your dominant brainwave state to the desired frequency. This is significant, as the combination of the right audio technology and a set of headphones can provide an access point to positively influence your cognitive function and achieve beneficial states such as deep relaxation, enhanced memory and mental performance or increased energy, focus and motivation.
Through over 20 years of research, we have developed specialized pulsed tones that are unparalleled in their ability to stimulate and entrain your brain in this way.
As an example, the Neural Agility recording on our RevitaMind product has been designed to entrain your natural brainwave patterns down to a specific frequency within the Theta range known to support improved memory, mental sharpness and processing speed. Customer testimonials collected over many years would appear to validate this!
When the brain receives an audio stimulus through the ears and auditory pathways, it emits an electrical charge in response, called the Cortical Evoked Response (shown below). These electrical responses are then processed throughout the brain to become what you hear.
When rhythms that resemble natural internal brainwave states are presented to the brain, the brain will synchronize its own electric cycles producing comparable states of mind – such as deep relaxation or heightened wakefulness. This tendency of the brain to tune in to and match to the external stimulus’ frequency is a phenomenon known in scientific terms as the Frequency Following Response (“FFR”).
It is worthy to note here that your brain will never get used to our audio entrainment recordings. It will continue to respond to them as a result of this FFR. The FFR does not go away with use or time and is not affected by how many times it’s activated – it is always there.
In order for effective entrainment to occur, a constant, repetitive stimulus of sufficient strength to ‘excite’ the thalamus must be present (the thalamus is our sensory relay center within our midbrain). The thalamus (specifically, the medial geniculate nucleus within the thalamus as seen in the diagram below) then passes the stimuli onto the sensory-motor strip, the neo-cortex in general and associated processing areas such as the auditory cortices in the temporal lobes and the pre-frontal cortex. Through listening to our unique technology, the brain is pushed to create new neural pathways, changing patterns of perception and information transfer, thereby creating new ways of experiencing your surroundings and dealing with stress. It is at this stage when the benefits of properly engineered brainwave entrainment have a genuine effect.
This diagram shows the neural pathways of hearing. Sound passes through the ear into the cochlea where the auditory nerves are located. The signals from these nerves are carried down to several locations. One is called the superior olive. In the superior olive, the minute differences in the timing and loudness of the sound in each ear are compared, and from this you can determine the direction the sound came from. Another point is the medial geniculate of the thalamus (a relay point) from where auditory information is then transmitted to the main cortex and the auditory cortex simultaneously. Entrainment only occurs from the thalamic relay point (from the medial geniculate nucleus) and not through the olivary bodies where traditional forms of brainwave entrainment technology such as ‘Binaural Beats’ are heard.By definition, entrainment occurs when the brain wave frequency duplicates that of the stimuli, whether audio, visual or tactile (Siever, 2003) as can be seen on an EEG.
It’s critical that the brainwave entrainment technology you listen to must meet both the physiological criteria (the actual cortical evoked response) and the psychological criteria (a person’s mental acceptance of the tones) to be effective. This combination is where Active Minds Global’s specialty lies and why our products have such a positive effect on our listeners.
Through literally 20 years of research and development, we have engineered specific pulsed tones (contained within each of the tracks: NeuroLearn+, WorkSharp & RevitaMind) that are rather remarkable in their ability to have a positive entrainment effect on the human brain.
- Our technology ONLY uses the most powerful monaural and/or isochronic tones and we engineer them in a unique way using high fidelity audio equipment to ensure the listener receives a much stronger cortical evoked response than with other products. We have a strict policy against using Binaural Beats technology, which is commonly used with other inferior products.
- Our audio tones are the ‘cleanest’ you will ever listen to and don’t have clicks, pops, scratches or other interfering sounds that would reduce beneficial effects.
- The precision we take in setting the spacing between the peaks and troughs of our pulsed tones and the consistency in how we do this is unsurpassed by any other provider. This factor is as important to the benefits you receive as just about anything else.
- We include a specially crafted form of background white noise that is designed to enhance the entrainment effect. Every single background sound you hear is intentionally presented to optimize the benefits you will receive.
- We have over 20 years of experience as to what precise brainwave frequencies produce the greatest benefits for our listeners.
There are very few other audio entrainment producers globally who adopt anything close to our approach. Most others create their audio tracks on simple computer programs and add music, spoken word and even nature sounds to their tracks, all of which can substantially negate the positive effects. You can therefore take comfort that you are choosing the very best audio entrainment products available globally.
In the following review article, 20 studies on Brainwave Entrainment were reviewed recently:
“A Comprehensive Review of the Psychological Effects of Brainwave Entrainment” by Tina L. Huang, PhD; Christine Charyton, PhD Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine; Sep/Oct 2008; 14, 5; Research Library pg. 38.
Here is a direct quote from the article’s conclusions:
“Findings to date suggest that BWE [Brainwave Entrainment] is an effective therapeutic tool. People suffering from cognitive functioning deficits, stress, pain, headache/migraines, PMS and behavioral problems benefited from BWE.”
In terms of our own technology, a Brazilian government official contacted Morry several years ago about the possibility of using our underlying technology to help with such things as post-traumatic stress disorder, work related efficiency, and many other factors and facets of everyday life in the Brazilian armed forces and military police. The Brazilian government commissioned a research study which involved the exclusive use of Morry’s recordings in a major university research project. The findings of this study concluded that Morry’s technology not only helped Officers’ fulfill their daily duties in a more efficient, effective and healthful manner, but also helped with major stress indicators in the performance of otherwise very stressful and even dangerous duties. To view a copy of the Brazilian Government’s report (please note we have preserved the rough English translation) then please click here.
We are the first to admit these independent findings indicate strong preliminary evidence of the efficacy of properly engineered brainwave entrainment, but are not conclusive until more comprehensive larger sample size studies are undertaken. We currently have further independent studies under way for Morry’s technology.
Our final view is that there is no better measure than your own experiential results while listening to our unique recordings for at least three weeks of proper usuage. We are so confident in our technology that we offer you a full 60 day money back guarantee and will readily refund your money if you don’t notice significant improvements in cognitive function and mental alertness.