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Context * Recent studies and anecdotal reports suggest that binaural auditory beats can affect mood, performance on vigilance tasks, and anxiety.
Objective * To determine whether mildly anxious people would report decreased anxiety after listening daily for 1 month to tapes imbedded with tones that create binaural heats, and whether they would show a definite tape preference among 3 tapes.
Design * A 1-group pre-posttest pilot study.
Setting e Patients' homes.
Participants * A volunteer sample of 15 mildly anxious patients seen in the Clinique Psyche, Montreal, Quebec.
Intervention e Participants were asked to listen at least 5 times weekly for 4 weeks to 1 or more of 3 music tapes containing tones that produce binaural beats in the electroencephalogram delta/theta frequency range. Participants also were asked to record tape usage, tape preference, and anxiety ratings in a journal before and after listening to the tape or tapes.
Main Outcome Measures e Anxiety ratings before and after tape listening, pre- and poststudy State-Trait Anxiety Inventory scores, and tape preferences documented in daily journals.
Results e Listening to the binaural beat tapes resulted in a signifi
cant reduction in the anxiety score reported daily in patients' diaries. The number of times participants listened to the tapes in 4 weeks ranged from 10 to 17 (an average of 1.4 to 2.4 times per week) for approximately 30 minutes per session. End-of-study tape preferences indicated that slightly more participants preferred tape B, with its pronounced and extended patterns of binaural beats, over tapes A and C. Changes in pre- and posttest listening State-Trait Anxiety Inventory scores trended toward a reduction of anxiety, but these differences were not statistically significant.
Conclusions a Listening to binaural beat tapes in the delta/theta electroencephalogram range may be beneficial in reducing mild anxiety. Future studies should account for music preference among participants and include age as a factor in outcomes, incentives to foster tape listening, and a physiologic measure of anxiety reduction. A controlled trial that includes binaural heat tapes as an adjunctive treatment to conventional therapy for mild anxiety may be warranted.
(Altern Ther Health Med. 2001; 70):58-63)
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