digital drug

If you see someone wearing earphones with a dreamy expression on their face, they could be experiencing the effects of a digital drug.  Also called the binaural beat, the digital drug is an effect created by listening to two synthesised sounds of slightly different frequencies, one in each ear, the brain creating the illusion of a third sound which occurs initially as a regular beat.  This illusionary interference beat is the same as the one that would be physically created, as by using tuning forks of different frequencies.

A German physicist, Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, discovered binaural beats in 1839. They were regarded as a scientific oddity until an American, Gerald Oster, did more research on how the brain processes two different sound frequencies at the same time, and published this in the Scientific American in 1973. He was interested in it as a diagnostic tool because some people, such as those suffering Parkinson’s disease, can’t hear the beat.

The third beat is supposed to create an altered state in the brain, similar to that achieved by taking recreational drugs or by meditating.  This is thought to reduce stress and anxiety.  There are no studies to show that this is true, but believing that you are on a high can be just as good, and just as addictive.