Binaural beats for concentration: the evidence

Do binaural beats help you concentrate?

Sometimes, a little, and not reliably. In 2025 a research team led by Melnichuk gathered 18 earlier studies of binaural beats and attention into one table, then ran a study of its own (Melnichuk and colleagues). Of those 19, 8 found a difference with the beats, 5 found one on some measures or beats and not on others, and 6 found none. The largest of them all, with 488 people, found no difference.

Pooled reviews put the same picture into averages. A 2019 meta-analysis of 22 studies reported a medium average effect (g = 0.45) across memory, attention and other measures, and a 2023 meta-analysis of 15 studies of memory and attention reported g = 0.40, while its study-by-study review found the results conflicting. An average over many small studies, each with its own beat, task and comparison sound, cannot tell you what one beat will do at your desk. It can tell you the effect is not large, and that it does not show up every time.

What is a binaural beat?

A binaural beat is a pulse your hearing makes when each ear hears its own steady tone and the two differ slightly. Play 108 Hz in the left ear and 140 Hz in the right, and the beat runs at the difference, 32 times a second. Neither ear hears anything at 32 Hz: the beat is made in the brainstem, where neurons that compare the timing at the two ears fire at the rate of the difference. H. W. Dove first reported it in 1839, and Oster found it only with tones below about 1,000 Hz (Chaieb and colleagues' review).

It needs headphones. Through a speaker both tones reach both ears and mix in the air into an ordinary physical beat, a monaural beat. Binaural beats and isochronic tones sets the kinds of beat side by side, and the guide to binaural beats covers every rate from delta to gamma.

What do studies of attention show?

A scatter of small results that point both ways. The chart sets Melnichuk's 19 studies side by side: how many people each tested, what it found, and whether it used a gamma beat like the Rising Gamma Session. Eleven of the 19 tested 40 people or fewer, and only one passed 100.

The studies, by what they found

Study	People	What it found
Axelsen	90	Beats did better than no sound, as did practised meditators
Moessinger	80	Beats in music did better than the music alone
Kirk	77	Beats did better than doing nothing, as did meditation
Hommel	40	Gamma beats did better than a plain tone
Colzato	36	Gamma beats did better than a plain tone
Lane	29	Beta beats did better than slower beats
Engelbregt, second study	25	Gamma beats did better than pink noise; monaural beats did worse
Lim	25	Beats with massage did better than massage or relaxation alone
Melnichuk	64	Gamma beats on the lower tone, in white noise, did better overall; the decline over time was no smaller
Vida	30	Better on a listening task, not on a visual one
Ross and Lopez	27	Gamma beats did better than no sound; beta beats did not
Engelbregt, first study	24	Faster reactions with beats, but no better scores
Reedijk	24	Gamma beats did better than a plain tone; alpha beats did not
Robison	488	No difference from a plain tone
Crespo	60	No difference from pink noise
Leistiko	60	No difference from a plain tone
Wang	60	No difference from a plain tone
Cepeda-Zapata	26	No difference between theta and beta beats
Kennel	20	No difference from pink noise

Download the studies (CSV)

The results that found a difference are real, and they are small and scattered. They used different beats, different tasks and different comparison sounds: a plain tone, pink noise, music, or no sound at all. In the mixed results, a difference on one measure or beat sat beside none on another. In Lane and colleagues' study, the oldest here, 29 people did a 30-minute watch task on three days with beats in pink noise, without being told the beats were there; beta beats at 16 and 24 Hz came with more correct detections and fewer false alarms than slower theta and delta beats.

The careful null results weigh as much. Robison and colleagues played a 16 Hz beat during a sustained attention task in three experiments, and combining two of them gave, in their words, "rather strong evidence against the hypothesis that beta-frequency binaural beats can augment sustained attention". Goodin and colleagues saw no change in vigilance or in EEG power with two minutes of 7 or 16 Hz beats, compared with white noise.

Melnichuk's own study is the most thorough so far. Its team randomised 80 undergraduates, each to one of 16 combinations: a beta or gamma beat, a 340 or 400 Hz carrier, beats starting before the task or with it, and white noise or none. Each person did the task once with beats and once with a plain tone, and the final sample was 64. Gamma beats on the lower carrier with white noise came with better attention overall, but not with a smaller decline across the session, the vigilance decrement by which sustained attention is usually measured. Across all the settings, the decline was smaller with beats than with the plain tone when the sound started before the task, and not when it started with the task, though the authors judge that the beats did not robustly change it. The EEG followed the beat, more strongly without the white noise.

One more gamma-beat paper is missing from the table for a reason. A 2017 study of gamma beats and how the mind binds what it sees, by authors from the Leiden group behind Reedijk's and Colzato's studies, was retracted after a Leiden University investigation found evidence of manipulated data; 88 people had been tested, but only 40 were included in the analysis. It is not among the 19.

Which binaural beat frequency is best for concentration?

No rate has won. Beta and gamma are the rates tested most, and each has results both ways. Beta beats have the oldest positive result, Lane's, and the largest null one, Robison's. Of the 9 studies in the chart that tested a gamma beat, 3 found a difference, 4 were mixed and 2 found none.

The gamma studies linked here all used 40 Hz. Reedijk and colleagues found that a 40 Hz beat removed the attentional blink, a brief gap in noticing a second target, but only in people with low spontaneous eye-blink rates. Colzato and colleagues found a smaller global precedence effect after a 40 Hz beat, which they read as a narrower focus of attention, and no change in how well people ignored what did not matter. In Engelbregt and colleagues' study, 25 students made fewer false responses on a Flanker task with a 40 Hz binaural beat than with pink noise, and more with a monaural beat, though the EEG did not show the brain following the beat. Ross and Lopez recorded a strong gamma response to a 40 Hz beat across three days of training on the attentional blink. Scores did not rise within a session, and both groups gained the same amount overall, but the gain from one day to the next was largest after a session with the 40 Hz beat, which the authors read as training that pays off sooner.

Against those, adults in Leistiko and colleagues' study, doing an attention test at home, showed no differences in reaction time, errors or the attention networks with a 40 Hz beat, and the authors conclude that their findings "do not provide evidence for improvement in attention" with gamma beats. When Rakhshan and colleagues played 10, 16 and 40 Hz beats to the same 31 adults for 8 minutes each, only the 10 Hz alpha beat showed even a few slight effects, and only on visual and spatial tasks. The guide to gamma waves and the guide to beta waves follow each band's research further.

Why does the Rising Gamma Session use 32 to 40 Hz?

It starts just inside gamma and ends at the rate most studied. The IFCN's glossary of EEG terms puts the gamma band above 30 and up to 80 Hz. The session's beat starts 2 Hz above that line and rises to 40 Hz, the rate every gamma study linked above used, and the rate at which Ross and colleagues recorded the largest response in the hearing cortex when they swept binaural beats from 3 to 60 Hz. Beats at every rate drew gamma activity there; 40 Hz drew the most.

A beat that fast does not sound like a pulse. A 2023 systematic review sums up the classic findings: up to 20 Hz a binaural beat sounds like a tone fluctuating in loudness, above 20 Hz like a rough sound, and beyond a difference of about 30 Hz the two tones are heard separately. Ross and colleagues describe the percept moving from loudness fluctuation to roughness and pitch as the rate rises. So expect two calm tones, perhaps with a fast roughness, rather than a beat you could tap along to.

What is the Rising Gamma Session?

It is Harmonance's nine-hour gamma piece: two pure tones and nothing else. The left ear hears 108 Hz the whole time; the right ear starts at 140 Hz and rises in one straight line to 148 Hz, so the beat climbs from 32 Hz to 40 Hz, about 0.89 Hz an hour. The session's page plays it free, with no ads, and the 40 Hz gamma binaural beat plays one steady rate if you prefer it. Both are in the Binaural Beats collection.

The uploaded nine-hour master, measured

Moment	Right ear	Beat
First second	140.00 Hz	32.00 Hz
Halfway, 4 h 30 min	144.00 Hz	36.00 Hz
Last second	148.00 Hz	40.00 Hz

Harmonance measured the uploaded master itself, not only the recipe. Its loudness reads -23 LUFS, and its peaks stay more than 21 dB below the loudest a recording can go. The climb is slow enough to work out by hand. The beat rises 0.89 Hz an hour, so across a 50-minute block of work it moves by about 0.74 Hz: for the length of one study session, the beat is close to steady. Each beat lasts 31.25 milliseconds at the start and 25 milliseconds at the end. The interval between the two ears widens from about 449 cents to 545 cents, almost a semitone more over nine hours, and across the whole session the two tones make about 1.17 million beats. The slow rise is a listening choice, not something the studies above tested.

How do you use binaural beats while you study or work?

• Use headphones. The beat forms only when each ear gets its own tone. Turn off spatial audio or head tracking, and check that left and right are the right way round.
• Start before you begin. The 2019 meta-analysis found that listening before a task, or before and during it, did better than listening only during it, and that longer listening did better. In Melnichuk's study, too, the beats came with a smaller decline only when they started before the task. Press play a few minutes before you open your work.
• Noise is optional. The same meta-analysis found no gain from hiding the beat in white or pink noise, while Melnichuk's one condition that did better used white noise. Try it plain first.
• Keep it quiet. The World Health Organization's safe listening advice gives 80 dB as safe for up to 40 hours a week and suggests keeping a device below 60 per cent of its maximum. A beat this gentle needs very little volume.
• Test it on yourself. Play it through one block of work, work the next in silence, and compare what you got done. If you arrive with a feeling rather than a number, the Need to focus page starts there.
• Keep a practice. In Studio you can set a timer and save the mixes you come back to.
• Stop when you want to. Do not listen while driving or doing anything that needs your full attention, and take the headphones off if anything feels uncomfortable.

The guide to brainwave frequencies takes each band in turn, and alpha waves covers the band that Rakhshan's one small effect came from.

Sources and limits

The chart rests on one research team's table of earlier studies, with its own study added. Harmonance read each recorded result into one of three groups, and the table's own words sit beside that reading in the CSV. The studies are small and differ in beat, carrier, task, comparison sound and how long people listened, so they cannot be added up into one answer. None tested the Rising Gamma Session itself. Its numbers come from the uploaded master's decoded audio.

1. Melnichuk and colleagues, binaural beat settings and sustained attention: the table of 18 studies behind the chart, and their own study of 16 settings.
2. Garcia-Argibay and colleagues, a meta-analysis of binaural beats: the average effect across 22 studies, and when to listen.
3. Basu and Banerjee, a meta-analysis of binaural beats, memory and attention: 15 studies and their conflicting results.
4. Robison and colleagues, beta beats and sustained attention: three experiments with a 16 Hz beat.
5. Lane and colleagues, binaural beats, vigilance and mood: beats at 16 and 24 Hz.
6. Goodin and colleagues, a high-density EEG study of binaural beats: beats at 7 and 16 Hz.
7. Reedijk and colleagues, binaural beats and the attentional blink: a 40 Hz beat and eye-blink rates.
8. Colzato and colleagues, gamma beats and the global and local task: a 40 Hz beat and the focus of attention.
9. Engelbregt and colleagues, binaural and monaural beats, attention and EEG: a 40 Hz beat and a Flanker task.
10. Ross and Lopez, 40 and 16 Hz beats during training: three days of the attentional blink task.
11. Leistiko and colleagues, gamma beats and the attention network test: an attention test at home with a 40 Hz beat.
12. Rakhshan and colleagues, alpha, beta and gamma beats in one study: 10, 16 and 40 Hz beats in 31 adults.
13. Experimental Brain Research, a retraction note: the gamma-beat paper withdrawn after the Leiden investigation.
14. Ingendoh and colleagues, binaural beats and brain activity, a systematic review: what a beat sounds like at each rate.
15. Ross and colleagues, slow and fast binaural beats in the cortex: beats from 3 to 60 Hz, the largest response at 40 Hz.
16. Chaieb and colleagues, auditory beat stimulation: how a binaural beat is made, and its history.
17. Kane and colleagues, IFCN glossary of EEG terms: the gamma band, above 30 to 80 Hz.
18. World Health Organization, safe listening: how loud, for how long.