Syarifah N. Deraman, Valliyappan D. Natarajan, Mohd Jailani Mohd Nor, and Mohd Zaki Nuawi
Embedded binaural beats, Measurement and instrumentation, Auditory evoked potential, Brainwave synchronization, Mental states, Biomedical signal processing
Electrical impulses and chemical activities in human brain generate brain waves at frequency domains ranging between 0.5 Hz and 100 Hz that characterize different mental states. The states of attention and focus can be traced to areas within the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of the brain at gamma brainwave frequencies of about 40 Hz and above. The cerebral brain cells can be synchronized to a desired frequency by externally stimulating the cells using acoustical means such as binaural beats (BB). Exposure to pure beats can be annoying and stressful to the listener. BB signals embedded in a background audio could provide better listening comfort to the subject. This paper presents a study on the efficacy of embedded BB in gamma-domain brainwave synchronization. Electroencephalograph signals indicative of the auditory evoked potential (AEP) on test subjects due to resonance of the PFC with the induced aural stimuli are measured. It is observed that the BB signals masked in an audio background give AEP values that are on average 92% similar to that generated by pure BB. The results indicate that the embedded BB has an effect comparable to pure BB on the AEP measured at selected PFC locations at the 40 Hz gamma frequency.
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