[HN Gopher] Dancing brainwaves: How sound reshapes your brain ne...
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Dancing brainwaves: How sound reshapes your brain networks in real
time
Author : lentoutcry
Score : 183 points
Date : 2025-06-08 11:47 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedaily.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedaily.com)
| PcChip wrote:
| Is this why i can focus on coding so much better when listening
| to psytrance/goa?
| tomrod wrote:
| I do the same. It is strange how psytrance/goa helps as
| external noise to drown out other distractions and so focus can
| be rationed.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| I've found a bit of caffeine and some Astral Projection ideal
| for this. Care to share any favorite artists?
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Not an artist per se but the app Endel is this continuous
| generated music with different "scenarios" for... well...
| different scenarios. IMO the full continuity is a game
| changer for focus.
| edvald wrote:
| I can recommend dub techno for coding, works a treat for me at
| least. Nice and steady, relatively fast tempo but not too
| aggressive or intrusive. And crucially, no lyrics, which I find
| distracting when coding or writing.
| jason-johnson wrote:
| I prefer classical music for this. Not "Flight of the
| bumblebee" type stuff, more like Adagio for Strings:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izQsgE0L450
| bradly wrote:
| Yes. The paper found 2.4 Hz frequencies to be the secret sauce
| which is 144 BPM and in pystrance/goa range. I would guess that
| is common freq range for lfos and modulations as well.
| parpfish wrote:
| I've always thought it was funny how the two situations for
| listening to edm were so different:
|
| - alone doing intensely focused work
|
| - in a huge crowd dancing and definitely NOT doing work
| robviren wrote:
| I do still actively wonder what portion of the effects are real
| vs placebo in audio "treatments". I'm not certain I am sold on
| things like binaural beats and such, but I do believe that
| pleasing music that relaxes the brain for a person can be real.
| It's just highly person dependent. One persons calming effect
| with hard rock is another person's anxiety source. Would be
| incredible if it allowed for better understanding of this.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I was regularly surprised how music could restore 'colors' in
| my emotions even in the darkest times. Quite mind-blowing that
| something that looks completely abstract and removed from
| evolutionary advantage could have so much impact.
| skeledrew wrote:
| Binaural beats usage has worked pretty well for me in the past.
| Maybe think of it as the most pure form music (from a
| functional perspective) can take.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44258339
| kator wrote:
| A little better link here with a link to the detailed article,
| too.
|
| https://health.au.dk/en/display/artikel/dansende-hjerneboelg...
|
| Meanwhile, it's interesting that I do find I can focus deeper on
| code with certain types of music. I also have certain music I
| listen to when I want to write a document, such as a PRFAQ or
| some narrative. I've always assumed I was just "programming"
| myself for these modes, and the music was reminding me of the
| mode I was in. Perhaps it's a little of both.
| swayvil wrote:
| Assuming that we don't perceive "real reality" but rather a
| complex model of it, they say what we call sound comes closest to
| real reality.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Assuming everything is energy then the sensor picks up on
| different attributes of the signal. Reality is the signal, the
| scatter is noise, the parts with order (music) are the message.
| canadiantim wrote:
| While we don't perceive "real reality" either with our senses
| or abstractions from them, and likewise often are just
| perceiving complex abstract models of reality, I think we also
| do have the ability to experience (but not perceive) reality
| directly. To your point though, I do think sound is closer to
| an experience than a perception and therefore more real and
| less abstract.
| skeledrew wrote:
| We're very literally unable to perceive "real reality" per se.
| All we can ever perceive are the effects that reality has on
| our senses, along with any "side-effects" caused by the
| differences in one person's sensory system compared to another
| (personalized complex model).
| lnx01 wrote:
| green-needle/brain-storm would disagree with you!
| quantadev wrote:
| This is also direct evidence that qualia/consciousness is made of
| waves, not computations. The Neural Net "wiring" of the human
| brain is mostly I/O signal routing for various sensory input data
| and motor neuron output. The convolutions and special 3D shapes
| in the brain are actually working more like "resonator" circuits
| (literally like radios), and I'm convinced even memory is not
| stored "locally" but spread out across all past brains via
| entanglement and quantum waves (see. "Block Universe" and/or
| "Eternalism").
|
| This viewpoint means when you remember something from the past
| that's actually a quantum wave effect where your current brain
| automatically "finds" and gets energy from the closest matching
| prior state. This would be like a opera singer singing a pitch to
| find a hidden wine glass that will resonate at that frequency.
| This lookup/retrieval mechanism requires no wires or direct
| contact, but only waves. However I think qualia is built of
| 'probability waves' and that's how they manage to travel faster
| than light to go out and find "matching memories", because
| probability waves are not "real" (no mass) and therefore not
| subject to the speed of light limitations.
| skeledrew wrote:
| Did this reconfig-by-sound a lot in college using binaural beats.
| While others use coffee and other chemicals I'd just pop in my
| earphones and play a beat sequence for whatever the needed
| purpose, whether extreme focus, a power nap, enhanced creativity,
| etc. Worked pretty well, though I'd feel nuked for a while after
| extended usage.
| EGreg wrote:
| How exactly did you feel afterwards? Could you list the
| different beat patterns (or link to an example) and the result?
|
| Especially power nap lol
| skeledrew wrote:
| It's a bit hard to describe: a kind of extremely worn out and
| braindead feeling. But that's usually after using it for
| several hours on end. The brain just isn't designed to be
| forced into a particular state for extended periods I guess.
|
| My goto was the Gnaural app[0], but it's been a dead project
| for some time. Still have the app on my phone though, in case
| I want to do quick dives. There are other implementations and
| also audio files out there, but I never found anything as
| good for my use case.
|
| [0] https://gnaural.sourceforge.net/
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| BrainWave advance binaural programs is probably very
| similar, has different tracks implying the desired effect.
| Some of them definitely help with what they arr supposed
| to, morning coffee and deep relaxation are consistent with
| their naming
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| https://www.banzailabs.com/binaural-brainwave-
| entrainment-ap...
|
| Websites a bit old skool but its legit
| quantadev wrote:
| There's a specific frequency of brain waves which are always
| correlated with wakeful consciousness. I never looked up
| whether 'binaural' stuff is normal in that same freq range or
| the lower ranges. The lower freq ranges are still present even
| during unconsciousness (or anesthesia), and so focusing the
| brain on those frequencies would either 1) help concentration
| or 2) help sleep? I'm not sure which.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Related tangent - here's my carefully-curated "flowstate" Spotify
| playlist consisting of tracks w/ no lyrics and a variety of
| moods. I pick one that suits me in the moment and put it on
| repeat. I find it boosts my focus and energy and is very helpful
| in attaining flowstate, for problem-solving or Cal Newport-style
| "deep work" sessions.
|
| https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UScdOAlqXqWTOmXFgQhFA?si=...
| kranner wrote:
| I've always thought of songs with human vocals as cries of
| conspecifics, impossible to ignore and thus highly distracting.
| dgfl wrote:
| Not sure if that's because I'm not a native speaker, but
| unless I make a conscious and quite tiresome effort to listen
| to the lyrics, the human voice is just another instrument
| among many.
| bluechair wrote:
| I don't know about others but I felt like this article is so high
| level that it didn't explain anything at all.
|
| Here's a link to the paper:
|
| https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ad...
| erikerikson wrote:
| Also here if you don't like Wiley:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40211612/
| shironandonon_ wrote:
| this site that has been previously posted on HN works well:
|
| https://musicforprogramming.net/
|
| Otherwise agree with psytrance / goa mixes. Techno can be good
| too if you are tired (eg: Sara Landry, 999999999). Trance can
| help to uplift if you are depressed. Classical to make you feel
| more ordered.. I love dubstep in my brain but it creates patterns
| that are counter-intuitive to doing any work -- that genre makes
| me feel "free".
| benchly wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, I've not seen that site before and this is
| very much in-line with my own discovery about using music to
| help with my anxiety. The About blurb really sums it up. Wild,
| because had anyone presented such claims to me 20 years ago, I
| would have waved them away as bullpucky peddlers. Now, DnB +
| other electronic genres are dosed daily while at work through
| my headphones and I'm better for it.
|
| Interesting that dubstep makes you feel free! I would not
| describe my experience like that, but it does tend to raise my
| aggression a bit, so I usually avoid it unless its crunch time.
| Your comment has me wondering about different experiences than
| mine. My DnB picks are more soothing to me, but sound too
| chaotic and "all over the place" for my wife's ADHD.
| keyle wrote:
| Don't forget Poolside FM.
| mfro wrote:
| The latest episode is extraordinary!
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| "Music is a delight for the soul, an echo of the divine, binding
| time together--past, present, and future."
|
| -- St. Augustine
|
| Music makes your brain work in an interesting way, keeping track
| of this memory/current flow/anticipation of time in a non-visual
| and often non-verbal way.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Sounds cliche, silly, etc. but music really is magic. Such an
| abstract thing that can produce wide ranges of emotions and even
| help focus and inspire.
|
| I find a lot of electronic music helpful for coding.
|
| Some bangers for anyone interested:
|
| Age Of Love - The Age Of Love (Charlotte de Witte & Enrico
| Sangiuliano Remix) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YVvcTIGy40
|
| Nero - My Eyes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiojdDs8wwk
|
| SUB FOCUS x WILKINSON @ Corfe Castle, Dorset
| https://youtu.be/TRh-amAhOEw?si=jCx1V7jkciB3h4kh
|
| Adventure Club - Gold (Ft. Yuna)
| https://youtu.be/09wdQP1FFR0?si=r7hfA6w3qfhXzL30
| orbit7 wrote:
| I agree music is very useful for switching things up a gear,
| from down tempo through to very high bpm such as:
| https://open.spotify.com/album/3f8egS9LhMlx6S3YqJdl3z?si=Fo1...
| melvinroest wrote:
| DnB is my jam, I'm a fan of sub focus and wilkinson.
|
| Here is 37 hours of DnB [1]. Here is 30 hours of mostly house
| [2].
|
| [1]
| https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6a14gkr30nOOr8Eu9T34tE?si=...
|
| [2]
| https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3BUgKCDAWvcDa28MVToIFM?si=...
| specproc wrote:
| Big up the DnB crew. I like it dirtier when out, but love a
| bit of liquid to code to.
|
| For sessions:
|
| Big Bud: Infinity + Infinity
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYEuCcMZB_o
|
| LTJ Bukem: Logical Progressions
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZK_0dgj43s
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYqDVqYSTxs
|
| And a few select cuts:
|
| Calibre & High Contrast: Mr Majestic
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nswe73umPQk
|
| Hybrid Minds / Daughter: Youth
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RUWkv4Ray8
|
| Hybrid Minds: Touch
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AKSpPkZAuE
| benchly wrote:
| These replies are fantastic, thanks all.
|
| I recently (last few years) discovered that not only do I
| like DnB, but there is something about it that keeps the
| anxiety goblin in my brain occupied the same way one might
| distract an unruly child with a video game or something
| equally engaging. Contrast to what the poo-poo'ers say, the
| organized chaos that it brings to my table actually _helps_
| me regain a bit of my higher-order thinking, especially
| when troubleshooting.
|
| Calibre is a fav, but already mentioned so I offer up
| another favorite of mine for those looking for something a
| bit more fluid with a nostalgia kick.
|
| Level Select by Pizza Hotline:
| https://pizzahotline.bandcamp.com/album/level-select
| melvinroest wrote:
| > the organized chaos that it brings to my table actually
| _helps_ me regain a bit of my higher-order thinking
|
| Same. My favorite playlist that I made for this is called
| Break Through The Galaxy [1]. It pushes me to think
| beyond my boundaries and those boundaries and those
| boundaries etc.
|
| It's 50% DnB and 50% other genres of which the
| songs/tracks hit the same way. For example, it starts
| with a calm guitar composition.
|
| [1] https://open.spotify.com/track/519POQZ8qXwhqtKzAu1Exp
| ?si=CSV...
| benchly wrote:
| Just a heads up, I'm not seeing your playlist when I
| click the link. Looks like it's linking straight to the
| track Beauty of Discipline by Gareth Pearson.
| melvinroest wrote:
| Thanks, here it is. I tested the link this time :)
|
| https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1c3AdAfB4J7iaZ0F9scVC5?
| si=...
| defrost wrote:
| If you like a bit of weird time signature, arpeggios, and
| seemingly dissonant sounds that eventually harmonize into
| chaotic outburst you _might_ enjoy what was my coding
| metronome back in the early 1980s ... YMMV - Steve Reich,
| _Music for 18 Musicians_
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXJWO2FQ16c
| benchly wrote:
| YES. Reich is fantastic :)
| defrost wrote:
| and then there's Nyman, Michael that is, not Gary ~
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3KgZlxTz8g is up there
| with _Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds_
| specproc wrote:
| Pizza Hotline is now getting me through the last bit of
| Friday. thank you, great stuff.
| replete wrote:
| Yoink!
|
| Liquid DnB is my goto flow state hack:
|
| 18 hours spotify playlist of my faves: https://open.spotify.c
| om/playlist/2GKgNjMOLu9GYy1puVknIJ?si=...
|
| Only thing to be aware of is that Spotify's shuffle is not a
| true shuffle, it's a shuffle designed to earn them the most
| money so you might have noticed the same tracks repeat
| themselves in a massive playlist, others don't play at all.
| Unfortunately the solution is to use on of those spotify API
| websites to dupe the playlist with a shuffle and play it with
| shuffle disabled.
| melvinroest wrote:
| Fun! I see some overlap. Will check it out :)
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Interesting, I listened to Tidal Wave by Sub Focus on repeat
| for like a week while coding!
| Jimpulse wrote:
| Such fond memories with this song.
|
| Check out the Heavy Breathing Liquid DnB mix by Dieselboy.
| It's one of my staples for coding and chilling out in
| general.
| coldtea wrote:
| Pass from me - no songs with lyrics for coding, and ever
| worse belting and melisma...
| some1else wrote:
| There's very little in the article about "how" sound reshapes
| "networks" in the brain. It's pretty reasonable to expect that
| hearing different sounds can cause different neurons to fire,
| though (considering you can upload information into somebody's
| brain by talking to them).
| quantadev wrote:
| The important discovery is not that sensory experiences
| correlate strongly with specific areas of the brain. That's
| been known for decades. What I think is possibly new here is
| that the musical waves are genuinely getting "in sync"
| (temporally). Neuron firing is too slow for this to happen due
| to the normal conventional interpretation of how the brain
| works, which is that info travels from synapse to synapse. It
| essentially disproves the "calculational" (synapse based) model
| of consciousness, and it proves that even qualia itself is
| based on waves.
|
| Sure it's possible that something akin to simple harmonic
| oscillator spontaneous synchronization could be happening (i.e.
| this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RYeNu159Sgc) but even if
| this 'dumb' sync is playing a role it still isn't evidence
| against the wave-based nature of qualia.
| b0a04gl wrote:
| honestly every time i see .htm i double check twice thinking it's
| a typo then realize no, it's actually .htm and weirdly
| comforting. means someone out there kept the old publishing flow
| alive. feels more handcrafted, less processed not trying to chase
| trends, just pushing pages the same quiet way for years there's
| something solid about that kind of consistency
| mihaaly wrote:
| There are combination of frequencies, tempo, volume, shortly
| specific music that acts as psychotropic agent on me, altering
| the way my mind works for the duration of the song. I am the type
| laughing at trance and meditation and other hyped-in-certain-
| circles blabla, but what I feel then may be something related.
| "Music is to me proof of the existence of god It is so
| extraordinarily full of magic And, and in tough times of my
| life I can listen to music and it makes such a difference"
| - 1 Giant Leap - Daphne
| pedalpete wrote:
| I work in neurotech with auditory stimulation, so you'd think I'd
| be a big fan of this area of research, and I think the authors
| have done a decent job of suggesting the limitations, but the
| title itself gets picked up and people read a lot into what they
| think this is saying. Or maybe I'm just a bit jaded.
|
| They provide a 2.4 Hz stimulus and then measure frequency-matched
| activity across brain networks. They suggest some novel methods
| of measuring how the signal traverses the brain, but they don't
| suggest why it does, which is good. They do say this is unlikely
| to be entrainment, I'll get into that more in a bit.
|
| We shouldn't be surprised that auditory stimulation produces
| frequency-matched activity across distributed brain regions. The
| auditory system naturally routes information across multiple
| interconnected networks. The auditory system picks it up, but the
| auditory system is also not siloed into a single area of the
| brain. No brain systems are, we have replication, and this is
| just showing the the nervous system is passing the signal
| throughout the brain. In no way does it suggest that this is
| related to thought, consciousness, focus, or that these
| frequency-matched responses reflect any functional change in
| brain state.
|
| When people talk about entrainment, that is a real thing. But the
| word itself describes when systems synchronize, not that they
| will.
|
| I guess I'm cautious about papers like these because of our work
| in neurostimulation and sleep where we use phase-targeted
| auditory stimulation to enhance slow-wave activity. Basically
| increasing sleep's restorative function.
|
| In our work it isn't this sort of "gentle tones to help you
| sleep", or "activating networks to alter brain activity", which
| is an area I see a lot of snake-oil and nonsense.
|
| The way closed-loop phase-targeted slow-wave enhancement works is
| by "interrupting" the brain during the synchronous firing of
| neurons, which (it is believed) triggers a protective mechanism
| in the brain and as a response, the brain increases the
| synchronous firing of neurons. We're talking about very short
| (50ms) interruptions.
|
| I get my back up a bit when I hear about this idea that reading
| electrical activity of the brain and making broad assumptions
| about what they "mean". I've been invited to speak on a panel
| July 2nd with Australia's Commissioner of Human Rights to discuss
| ethical safety around EEG data, and while I do believe we need to
| protect bio-data, I don't believe in the "electrical activity
| means we can read or alter your thoughts" camp.
|
| If you want to know more about our work, you can check out
| https://affectablesleep.com, and if you're in Sydney, and want to
| come to the talk, I can't find a link atm, but it's at the Sydney
| Knowledge Hub on July 2nd., part of the Sydney Neurotech Meetup
| Flozzin wrote:
| Maybe you would know or have an opinion. I see a lot of
| articles about rewiring your brain. For instance, the affects
| from meditation, or book reading. And how those things can
| rewire your brain. But does it matter? If it's relatively
| simple rewire your brain(simple as in, doing an activity for
| several months). It appears to me, that your brain adapts, and
| that adaptation is normal. Struggling to completely put this
| idea into words, but isn't this more like saying, 'if you lift
| this weight your muscles grow!', and then selling that as if
| its some sort of miracle?
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| A while back someone on this site posted a link to a music
| channel that fused the sound of an SFPD police dispatcher with an
| ecclectic mix of low-key electronic type music. Can't find it
| since but really liked it. Anyone here know what i'm describing?
| thenthenthen wrote:
| Should be this: https://youarelistening.to/
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| No actually. I remember that it was a green/black sort of
| site color scheme, but no worries, thanks for this. It's
| pretty damn good!
| hmm37 wrote:
| Are you talking about soma.fm?
|
| https://somafm.com/sf1033/
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Bingo. This was the exact link. I'd bookmarked the wider
| Soma.fm page, but it has many channels, so I didn't see
| this specific one and its layout as I remembered it, but
| now that you led me directly to it, thanks.
| ews wrote:
| mpv https://somafm.com/sf1033.pls on the cli will make that
| work
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Exact one I remembered, as I responded to another comment
| above. Thanks a lot for taking a moment to share it.
| tylervigen wrote:
| This article's title, subtitle, summary, and first two paragraphs
| all contain some version of the phrase "reshapes your brains
| internal networks in real time." I thought I was going crazy
| after I read the same thing six times.
| ordu wrote:
| Yeah, it is insane. They are also contain a little to no other
| information, so you kinda read the same thing six times, each
| time hoping to get some additional bits of information and each
| time getting nothing.
|
| edit: BTW I still didn't find what does it mean for brain to
| "reconfigure". The whole article doesn't say it. What a shame.
| coldtea wrote:
| Title authors rarely pick "title, subtitle, summary", editors
| do.
|
| It makes sense that the title and summary would restate the
| same thing - the main point of the article.
|
| And what you considered as the first paragraph (in calling out
| "first two paragraphs") is in fact what's called a pull-out, an
| extract of the article that's also in the body (a part that
| sums something up, a quote, etc).
|
| Sometimes the reason for such duplication is that those serve
| different purposes in different views (main post page vs
| listing vs RSS feed vs archive vs picture grid article list vs
| the mobile "responsive" layout, etc).
|
| The problem here is that the layout is badly designed: the
| summary could be ommited, and the pull-out shouldn't appear on
| top of the article, with minimal distinction (just larger type
| and italics) but preferably in a box somewhere further down for
| those skimming the post.
| Lu2025 wrote:
| This is why I use Instagram on silent. I don't want them to
| influence me too much.
| Noelia- wrote:
| I've always felt that certain sounds or music really affect how
| focused I am. Background noise from a cafe, for example, actually
| helps me concentrate and makes writing feel easier.
|
| It's kind of amazing when you think about it. Makes me want to
| experiment more and see if sound can actually "tune" the brain to
| boost focus or improve mood.
| keyle wrote:
| That has to do with the noise floor being higher than silence
| where you hear every details.
|
| Also it's noisy but you know no one isn't going to interrupt
| you which is why you can work there but not in a noisy office.
| Subconsciously you're flowing without having split attention.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Does this mean that people who claim listening different sound
| frequencies can _heal_ you were not wrong? If sound does have a
| profound effect like that, those changes in brain might effect
| other things as well.
| powgpu wrote:
| There has being quite bit research about how cells NOT only
| communicate biochemically, also via sounds and bio-photons. EMF
| is not that far of stretch either.
| gabriel666smith wrote:
| Any links / pointers on further reading? Would love to read
| more on this.
| motohagiography wrote:
| music is the category of all possible languages, is a statement
| I've been mulling lately. it's less of an aesthetic judgment than
| the usual, "music is a language," where it's more of a comment on
| encoding.
|
| I'd suggest the capacity for our brains and minds to apprehend
| shapes, relationships, patterns, and ultimately symbols is made
| from its ability to parse the category of things in music. time,
| difference, harmonics, consonance, dissonance, patterns. as
| though all the symbols and representations that emerge from our
| chunking and caching of stimuli into patterns are in a category
| of logical artefacts. we represent them- and relationships
| between them- as musical. Maths codifies or encodes these same
| relationships and artefacts, but the underlying objects aren't
| just abstractions, they are a measurement of essentially
| "musical" relationships.
|
| it falls a bit for the "everything is X" fallacy, but if people
| seriously pursue the premise that our brains compute, then
| plausibly, the stimulus it computes over is this category of
| possible languages we call "music." not sure how useful the idea
| is, but it's pretty.
| petemir wrote:
| Always a nice chance to recommend http://mynoise.net (and
| https://mynoise.pro/)
| achillesheels wrote:
| Love to research utilizing tFUS - much cheaper and scalable than
| magnets!
| fragmede wrote:
| https://strudel.cc/ for if you want to make your own
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