> The neuroscientists ... took alpha waves readings ... to create an optical "pulse": a white square flickering on a dark background at the same tempo as each person's individual alpha wave. // Participants got a 1.5-second dose of personalized pulse to set their brain working at its natural rhythm - ... "entrainment" - before being presented with a tricky quick-fire cognitive task [...] The learning rate for those locked into the right rhythm [under entrainment] was at least three times faster than for all the other groups
> Training is known to improve our ability to make decisions when interacting in complex environments. However, individuals vary in their ability to learn new tasks and acquire new skills in different settings. Here, we test whether this variability in learning ability relates to individual brain oscillatory states. We use a visual flicker paradigm to entrain individuals at their own brain rhythm (i.e. peak alpha frequency) as measured by resting-state electroencephalography (EEG). We demonstrate that this individual frequency-matched brain entrainment results in faster learning in a visual identification task (i.e. detecting targets embedded in background clutter) compared to entrainment that does not match an individual’s alpha frequency. Further, we show that learning is specific to the phase relationship between the entraining flicker and the visual target stimulus. EEG during entrainment showed that individualized alpha entrainment boosts alpha power, induces phase alignment in the pre-stimulus period, and results in shorter latency of early visual evoked potentials, suggesting that brain entrainment facilitates early visual processing to support improved perceptual decisions. These findings suggest that individualized brain entrainment may boost perceptual learning by altering gain control mechanisms in the visual cortex, indicating a key role for individual neural oscillatory states in learning and brain plasticity.
Interesting study, though I wouldn't rush to conclusions based on a sample size of 80.
Speaking personally however, I dont doubt that sound can affect how we feel, I use brain fm for focus on a regular basis and it works in a very similar way to caffeine for me.
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[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 14.8 ms ] threadOriginal research article: Learning at your brain’s rhythm: individualized entrainment boosts learning for perceptual decisions - https://academic.oup.com/cercor/advance-article/doi/10.1093/...
> Training is known to improve our ability to make decisions when interacting in complex environments. However, individuals vary in their ability to learn new tasks and acquire new skills in different settings. Here, we test whether this variability in learning ability relates to individual brain oscillatory states. We use a visual flicker paradigm to entrain individuals at their own brain rhythm (i.e. peak alpha frequency) as measured by resting-state electroencephalography (EEG). We demonstrate that this individual frequency-matched brain entrainment results in faster learning in a visual identification task (i.e. detecting targets embedded in background clutter) compared to entrainment that does not match an individual’s alpha frequency. Further, we show that learning is specific to the phase relationship between the entraining flicker and the visual target stimulus. EEG during entrainment showed that individualized alpha entrainment boosts alpha power, induces phase alignment in the pre-stimulus period, and results in shorter latency of early visual evoked potentials, suggesting that brain entrainment facilitates early visual processing to support improved perceptual decisions. These findings suggest that individualized brain entrainment may boost perceptual learning by altering gain control mechanisms in the visual cortex, indicating a key role for individual neural oscillatory states in learning and brain plasticity.
Speaking personally however, I dont doubt that sound can affect how we feel, I use brain fm for focus on a regular basis and it works in a very similar way to caffeine for me.