0467 The Effects of 1-4 Hz Binaural Beats on Delta Brain Wave During Sleep in University Students: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Sleep is crucial for the maintenance of both physical and mental health; however, a significant number of individuals are currently experiencing sleep disturbances or deprivation, which results in lower sleep quality, especially in university students. The N3 stage, deep sleep stage, has the importance of sleep quality enhancement and a delta brain wave with frequency of 1-4 Hz is generated in this stage. Binaural beats are believed to help improve sleep quality by helping the human brain to generate brain waves during sleep according to the frequency of the binaural beats. Binaural beats with frequency of 1-4 Hz have been proposed to induce delta waves in the brain, thus, the deep sleep stage will increase and eventually improve sleep quality. Therefore, the objective of this pilot study is to evaluate the effects of 1-4 Hz binaural beats in generating delta waves to increase the deep sleep stage (N3), as measured by electroencephalography. Methods A total of 9 right-handed participants (Male, n = 6; Female, n = 3) from KMITL institution with age of 18-25 years old (21.2 ± 0.97) were included in this pilot study, which utilized within-subjects study. 1-4 Hz binaural beats were created by musical chords to prevent monotony from using only one value of frequency and this 1-4 Hz binaural beats will generate a frequency of 1-4 Hz by using the difference of sound frequency between two ears. On the first night, participants slept without listening to binaural beats, while on the second night (7 days interval), they listened to 1-4 Hz binaural beats for 30 minutes during sleep. Electroencephalograms were recorded using polysomnography throughout the study. Results The results of this pilot study shows that the specific binaural beats increase total sleep time (TST), sleep efficiency, sleep onset, N1, N3 and REM stages but only N3 stage is statistically significant (p= 0.033). For the N2 stage, it decreases with statistical significance (p = 0.049), as calculated by the Wilcoxon-Signed Ranks test by SPSS software. Conclusion 1-4 Hz Binaural beats can help stimulate delta waves to increase the deep sleep stage (N3) with statistical significance. Support (if any)