Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Dec;128(6):3301-4.
doi: 10.1121/1.3505122.

A binaural beat constructed from a noise (L)

Michael A Akeroyd  1
Affiliations

A binaural beat constructed from a noise (L)

Michael A Akeroyd. J Acoust Soc Am. 2010 Dec.

Abstract

The binaural beat has been used for over 100 years as a stimulus for generating the percept of motion. Classically the beat consists of a pure tone at one ear (e.g., 500 Hz) and the same pure tone at the other ear but shifted upward or downward in frequency (e.g., 501 Hz). An experiment and binaural computational analysis are reported which demonstrate that a more powerful motion percept can be obtained by applying the concept of the frequency shift to a noise, via an upward or downward shift in the frequency of the Fourier components of its spectrum.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Results from the experiment: the number of “motion” responses for each binaural-beat noise, as a function of frequency shift (abscissa) and bandwidth (parameter). Each individual’s responses are plotted separately, with their mean in the bottom-right panel. The symbols are for tonal binaural beats (filled circles) or for binaural-beat noises with bandwidths of 50 Hz (open circles), 100 Hz (open triangles), 200 Hz (open diamonds), and 400 Hz (open hourglasses).
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Further results from the experiment: the number of “did not move” responses as a function of frequency shift (abscissa) and bandwidth (parameter). The results are averaged across listener. The panels are for the four options of “did not move” response; the symbols are the same as in Fig. 1
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
The instantaneous ITDs computed for one example each of a 200-Hz bandwidth binaural-beat noise (left panel) and a 200-Hz bandwidth “phasewarp” noise (right panel). Each have a frequency shift of 4 Hz. The three sets of symbols are for ITDs calculated in frequency channels centered on 400 Hz (open circles), 500 Hz (filled circles), and 600 Hz (stars).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Durlach NI, Colburn HS. Binaural phenomena. In: Carterette EC, Freidman M, editors. Handbook of Perception. Vol. IV. Academic Press; New York: 1978. pp. 405–466.
    1. Karino S, Yumoto M, Itoh K, Uno A, Yamakawa K, Sekimoto S, Kaga K. Neuromagnetic responses to binaural beat in human cerebral cortex. J. Neurophysiol. 2006;96:1927–1938. - PubMed
    1. Licklider JCR, Webster JC, Hedlun JM. On the frequency limits of binaural beats. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1950;22:468–473.
    1. Patterson RD, Allerhand MH, Giguére C. Time-domain modeling of peripheral auditory processing: A model architecture and a software platform. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1995;98:1890–1894. - PubMed
    1. Rayleigh Lord, Strutt JW. On our perception of binaural beats. Phil. Mag. (6 ser) 1907;13:214–232.

Publication types