I know this might be weird. randomly found this.--How to increase brain function

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i would hope this is true ... it is true using your prain helps to grow and renew brain cells. 😱
 
That stuff just seems so gimicky to me though....the stuff might work but I don't know...seems like a desperation thing to try it.
 
so_nice said:
This is a review article which means they are just accumulating/rationalizing older data. This does NOT directly support their own claimed "clinical research."

I wish it were true... perhaps, it helps to relax the mind?
Click to expand...

I don't think it's any different than meditation, it just puts you in a more relaxed state.
 
i've always liked it when classical music was lightly played in the backround when studying. my math teacher used to play it for us during tests and i found it helped me focus. i think the mind associates words like 'classy' 'calm' 'sophisticated' 'intelligent' etc with classical music/opera. its the same reason i listen to up beat music (hip hop etc) during my workouts. its all psychological. when i'm bench pressing i don't want leann rhymes or boys II men playing. give me some dmx and i get pumped.

i read 3 reviews on amazon for imusic volume 1 and two were negative (one was a 1/5 and the other 2/5). i listened to the samples and they seemed ok, however, i read on further and found that the music is choppy. i listened to one sample and it was very noticeable. apparently they toy with the music and make it choppy so the brain can connect the music which adds to the cognitive deveopment.... or something.

i looked up reviews on amazon for straight up classical music on cds used for 'focus' and 'concentration' and they recieved high reviews. out of 5+ reviews the average review was 5/5. so this not only seems more effective, but much more cost effective!
 
spo01...doesn't it kill you when they play that light pop/r&b crap in the gym? lol I have to bring headphones or my lifts go down about 10 lbs each...squat 30. Got to have my angry pulsing hate music usually. Classical is known to help when played lightly...I'd say just buy vivaldi, mozart collections from the bargain bin and listen to those.
 
Hi there,

Actually, I did most of my studying (especially USMLE Step I) 1. At the end of the runway at National Airport in Washington, DC with the planes taking off and landing over my head. 2. In the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Inova Fairfax Hospital with crying children, alarms and many people scurrying about. 3. In the Starbucks Coffee shop in Rockville, Md on a Saturday or Sunday morning with loads of folks coming in for their AM cup of joe. Did very well on USMLE and in medical school.

I trained myself to do my best concentration in a chaotic environment. I don't care what music, noise or else is going on (I DO draw the line at gunshots though), I can hone in and concentration. This has served me well now that I am a PGY-5 general surgery resident.

In short, I can study and concentrate anywhere. Handy skill to develop. Also, general surgery residency has enabled me to nap most anywhere too.

njbmd 🙂
 
if anyone wants to try it www.demonoid.com has them.

Edit: oh ya btw, according to the research you need to use stereo headphones for it to "work"
 
A lot of this stuff works by putting your mind in a focus state.

Check out binaural beats on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording

Had a convo in the past with a guy who specializes in this kind of recording. Heres a snipet of our conversation:

I'm pleased that you liked the overtones program. In the comments to that preset I give links to yet another preset called Maya 12-21-2012. The files were too large to host on the Bwgen Library so I used a neutral upload site. Get the Maya program. I think you'll like it. I put the link there a couple of weeks ago and already it's been downloaded going on 150 times. I was quite surprised at how popular it has become, especially since I did not publicize it outside of the Bwgen site.

I am of the same opinion regarding the prices charged by some of the big names like Centerpointe and Monroe. If you follow their pyramid program you end up spending thousands of dollars. That puts them well out of the budget for many people. Most of my professional work is done for companies and government agencies. I am in the process of modifying some of those programs for personal use and will set up a website soon where people can go to order them. Those programs are somewhat more sophisticated than the ones made with the Brainwave Generator software. There are 3 primary forms of entrainment waves: Binaural, Monaural and Isochronic. Of these 3 the one that Bwgen utilizes is Binaural. It has a couple of drawbacks. It produces the least change in human brainwaves (Monaural produces the most followed by Isochronic.) And it requires the use of headphones to really get the effect. On the plus side, Binaural waves tend to synchronize the brain hemispheres better than Monaural or Isochronic.

In my commercial work each program contains all 3, Binaural, Monaural and Isochronic. That means you get maximum effect, and it also means they can be used with or without headphones. And perhaps most attractive of all, they will be priced inexpensively. None of this $40 - $60 dollar and up crap those other places bilk you for. If you're interested I'll let you know when the site is ready. Since it's really more of a courtesy thing than a "for profit" site I'm only working on it in my spare time. It may still be a few weeks to a month or so before I'm ready to open the doors, so to speak.
 
crazy_cavalier said:
Seems like a scam to me.
Click to expand...

I was a psychology major . . . and my professors were quite convinced that only one study existed that showed listening to classical music improved test scores over rock music or no music. Other studies were unable to replicate the results, especially when the subjects were taking different kinds of tests. In fact, studies involving test-taking have consistently shown that having no kind of distraction is better than having any distraction, including music. So, no, there is no reason to believe that specific sounds or music have anything to do with synchronizing with your brain waves or anything of the kind -- that's a scam.

As far as the "brainwaves" stuff -- as a neuroscience geek myself, it sounds like utter bull****. Yes, brains have waves, but the notion that we know exactly what Einstein's or Da Vinci's brainwaves looked like when they came up with great ideas is so crazy that I actually laughed when reading the website. We do not know enough about the brain . . . using "we" loosely to mean people in the medical and neuroscience fields . . . to use sounds to make people smarter or brains more "efficient." Trust me, if we knew that, it would be in textbooks all over the place already (new editions come out every year) and universities would be studying it and perfecting methods like crazy. Psychology and neuroscience professors would be scrambling to compete for grants to do this stuff. That work hasn't been done, and this is a scam. This scam is designed for people who have no psychology or neuroscience background and therefore have a much-exaggerated opinion of what scientists know about the brain . . . the same kind of people who believe that we're very near making various kinds of mind-control chips (which, fyi, we aren't). Specific sequencing of brainwaves to maximize performance for different tasks is WAY beyond our current knowledge level.

I would look this up and prove it to you, but I don't have academic library access at the moment (out of undergrad, not in med school yet). I strongly suggest that people who do have access look this up on "psychinfo", which is the psychology academic database. I'm curious to double-check what I remember as well, and it's frusterating that I can't.

PubMed (which, wonderfully, is free to search) did not have much to offer, because this is a psychology topic, but it did have this very interesting article on how music that you like -- not necessarily classical, or specialized sounds -- affects your brain:

" Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 Sep 25;98(20):11818-23. Related Articles, Links


Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion.

Blood AJ, Zatorre RJ.

Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada. [email protected]

We used positron emission tomography to study neural mechanisms underlying intensely pleasant emotional responses to music. Cerebral blood flow changes were measured in response to subject-selected music that elicited the highly pleasurable experience of "shivers-down-the-spine" or "chills." Subjective reports of chills were accompanied by changes in heart rate, electromyogram, and respiration. As intensity of these chills increased, cerebral blood flow increases and decreases were observed in brain regions thought to be involved in reward/motivation, emotion, and arousal, including ventral striatum, midbrain, amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, and ventral medial prefrontal cortex. These brain structures are known to be active in response to other euphoria-inducing stimuli, such as food, sex, and drugs of abuse. This finding links music with biologically relevant, survival-related stimuli via their common recruitment of brain circuitry involved in pleasure and reward."

There was also this article:

" J Appl Behav Anal. 1992 Fall;25(3):665-70. Related Articles, Links


Musical reinforcement of practice behaviors among competitive swimmers.

Hume KM, Crossman J.

Lakehead University, Ontario, Canada.

This study determined whether music could be used as a reinforcer for increasing productive and decreasing nonproductive behavior of 6 competitive swimmers during the dry-land portion of practice session. The swimmers were randomly assigned to either the contingent reinforcement group, who received music for productive behavior, or the noncontingent group, who received music regardless of their training productivity. An ABAB design showed that a large and immediate increase in productive practice behavior and decrease in nonproductive practice behavior occurred during the contingent phase compared to the baseline phase. Subjects rated the musical reinforcement favorably and elected to have the procedure continued."

Nothing about "brainwaves" and improved performance with sounds came up. Not a thing.
 
vincikai said:
i would hope this is true ... it is true using your prain helps to grow and renew brain cells. 😱
Click to expand...

You don't really grow and renew that many CNS neurons. In fact, until very recently, it was thought that you never grew ANY more CNS neurons after you were born, and researchers were very surprised when they found out that people do grow some neurons in the brain as adults. But, don't go thinking that exercising your brain will regrow all those neurons you lost during drunken parties! 😀
 
sounds completely bogus to me.
 
Music does not increase your IQ per se, but it definitely does something to your brain:

General article: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2001/03.22/04-music.html

Can Music Education Really Enhance Brain Functioning and Academic Learning?
http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/music-education

I'm sure there are hundreds of other links out there.

As for binaural beats, they tune your brain to a certain frequency. Here is a 2004 article, however I don't think it was published in an academic journal:

http://www.monroeinstitute.com/voyages/hsj-summer-fall-2004-adhd-mcmurray.html

You can check out the BWGenerator at http://www.bwgen.com

I've had mixed success so far, however the 'coffee' and 'amphetamine' overtones were somewhat effective.



Cinnameg said:
I was a psychology major . . . and my professors were quite convinced that only one study existed that showed listening to classical music improved test scores over rock music or no music. Other studies were unable to replicate the results, especially when the subjects were taking different kinds of tests. In fact, studies involving test-taking have consistently shown that having no kind of distraction is better than having any distraction, including music. So, no, there is no reason to believe that specific sounds or music have anything to do with synchronizing with your brain waves or anything of the kind -- that's a scam.

As far as the "brainwaves" stuff -- as a neuroscience geek myself, it sounds like utter bull****. Yes, brains have waves, but the notion that we know exactly what Einstein's or Da Vinci's brainwaves looked like when they came up with great ideas is so crazy that I actually laughed when reading the website. We do not know enough about the brain . . . using "we" loosely to mean people in the medical and neuroscience fields . . . to use sounds to make people smarter or brains more "efficient." Trust me, if we knew that, it would be in textbooks all over the place already (new editions come out every year) and universities would be studying it and perfecting methods like crazy. Psychology and neuroscience professors would be scrambling to compete for grants to do this stuff. That work hasn't been done, and this is a scam. This scam is designed for people who have no psychology or neuroscience background and therefore have a much-exaggerated opinion of what scientists know about the brain . . . the same kind of people who believe that we're very near making various kinds of mind-control chips (which, fyi, we aren't). Specific sequencing of brainwaves to maximize performance for different tasks is WAY beyond our current knowledge level.

I would look this up and prove it to you, but I don't have academic library access at the moment (out of undergrad, not in med school yet). I strongly suggest that people who do have access look this up on "psychinfo", which is the psychology academic database. I'm curious to double-check what I remember as well, and it's frusterating that I can't.
Click to expand...
 
omniatlas said:
Music does not increase your IQ per se, but it definitely does something to your brain:

General article: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2001/03.22/04-music.html

Can Music Education Really Enhance Brain Functioning and Academic Learning?
http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/music-education

I'm sure there are hundreds of other links out there.

As for binaural beats, they tune your brain to a certain frequency. Here is a 2004 article, however I don't think it was published in an academic journal:

http://www.monroeinstitute.com/voyages/hsj-summer-fall-2004-adhd-mcmurray.html

You can check out the BWGenerator at http://www.bwgen.com

I've had mixed success so far, however the 'coffee' and 'amphetamine' overtones were somewhat effective.
Click to expand...

The Harvard article -- which is essentially a newspaper article, not a research or journal article -- basically summarizes a lot of very common knowledge about music and the brain, similar to what I found when I looked up this issue on PubMed yesterday (see above). Nobody is disputing that music has "an effect" on the brain, as everything pleasurable or painful has an effect on the brain, or that it is mysterious why our brains are wired to find some combinations of sounds pleasurable and others not so pleasurable . . . after all, we did not evolve with keyboards nearby. Or even panpipes. It's a mystery well worth investigaion. The dispute is over using specific sounds to manipulate brain activity towards the completion of certain tasks.

The article does say this: ""It's not clear what, if any, part these hearing centers play in 'feeling' music," Tramo notes. "Other areas of the brain deal with emotion and pleasure. There is a great deal of effort going on to map connections between the auditory cortex and parts of the brain that participate in emotion."" And that is true. But the leap from "we are looking into mapping connections" and "we already know enough to fine-tune the brain for specific tasks" is a BIG, unjustified leap. Even the mention of lowering blood pressure with music is completely unshocking -- yes, if you provide patients with some sort of activity or stimulus that the individual patient finds calming, from music in the room to a nice picture on the wall, patients will respond positively, and many of the positive responses will be measurable with certain physical markers like lowered blood pressure. That also does not justify the leap that we have the technology to fine-tune the brain with specialized sounds. Music is found in many studies to be generally calming -- but under NO circumstances should anyone believe at the moment that neuroscience has found that specific sounds have fine-tuned repurcussions in the brain.

The "brain connection" article didn't open. The "monroe institute" was dissappointing on several levels: first, it isn't peer reviewed nor published in an academic journal, second, it does not properly site its sources for information, and third, the article only dealt with the effects of binaural beats on a disordered brain, not on a normal brain. It contains NO evidence to suggest that any neuroscientist has done research to show that normal brains can be "tuned" to any "effective frequencies" to improve performance for specific tasks. While this was an interesting article, sparsely cited and non-reviewed as it is, it did nothing to convince me that using binaural beats to change brain waves to improve performance is anything but a scam. The article suggests a theory of binaural beats' effect on mood, but it does not cite references for the theory. In her bibliography, the author does have some interesting articles listed. I looked up her strongest reference (Physiol Behav. 1998 Jan;63(2):249-52. "Binaural auditory beats affect vigilance performance and mood.") and it seems that this controlled study was quite small (29 subjects), had very mild results of subjects listening to binaural beats doing slightly better on target detection and a slight self-report increase of mood, and was never replicated. Even this article makes no suggestion that certain frequencies of binaural beats can fine-tune the brain to improve performance on different types of tasks. In one limited task, target detection, people listening to binaural beats did very slightly better than people who did not. That's it.

However, I would love for somebody to prove me wrong by bringing forth a peer-reviewed academic journal article discussing how this kind of performance enhancement has been shown to be effective in a large controlled study. I love learning new tidbits about psychology and so if anyone has found such an article, PLEASE post the link. I suggest looking on psychinfo.
 
I am not an expect with binaural beats -- however, I have tried the Centerpointe demo cd (requested for free at http://www.centerpointe.com) and after listening to it for 10 minutes I was in a very relaxed state.

The guy I have been corresponding on the bwgen site has been nice to put up some of his audio samples (MP3) for free -- if you have the time, check it out and let us know what you think.

http://www.bwgen.com/presets/desc949.htm

As for brain enhancement -- I listen to classical music and it seems to help with my focusing to some degree.

Cinnameg said:
However, I would love for somebody to prove me wrong by bringing forth a peer-reviewed academic journal article discussing how this kind of performance enhancement has been shown to be effective in a large controlled study. I love learning new tidbits about psychology and so if anyone has found such an article, PLEASE post the link. I suggest looking on psychinfo.
Click to expand...
 
There are many well documented articles on how Isochronic tones work. Before you say this is bogus/a gimick/scam why don't you read into. The reason the music sounds weird is it is isochronic tones masked by classical music. I enjoy classical music and the tones don't bother me. I love iMusic.
 
virilep said:
Tell me what you all think. it's a bit expensive... hm

http://www.imusicseries.com/
Click to expand...

I wouldnt say its an absolute pure gimmick... but I heard that some may do better listening to Mozart?

Also some of Galileo Galilea of Pisa's (who dropped out of med school by the way-to pursue a labyrinth of mathematics) brillance may stem from the fact that his father who studied "the theory of musical harmony" or "the notes of perfect musical harmony"....Also early on in life Galileo studied with monks-- so he knew what meditation or "meteoric tunnel vision" was about!
 
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