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Kim J, Kim HW, Kovar J, Lee YS. Neural consequences of binaural beat stimulation on auditory sentence comprehension: an EEG study. Cereb Cortex 2024; 34:bhad459. [PMID: 38044462 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhad459] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/17/2023] [Revised: 11/05/2023] [Accepted: 11/06/2023] [Indexed: 12/05/2023] Open
Abstract
A growing literature has shown that binaural beat (BB)-generated by dichotic presentation of slightly mismatched pure tones-improves cognition. We recently found that BB stimulation of either beta (18 Hz) or gamma (40 Hz) frequencies enhanced auditory sentence comprehension. Here, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to characterize neural oscillations pertaining to the enhanced linguistic operations following BB stimulation. Sixty healthy young adults were randomly assigned to one of three listening groups: 18-Hz BB, 40-Hz BB, or pure-tone baseline, all embedded in music. After listening to the sound for 10 min (stimulation phase), participants underwent an auditory sentence comprehension task involving spoken sentences that contained either an object or subject relative clause (task phase). During the stimulation phase, 18-Hz BB yielded increased EEG power in a beta frequency range, while 40-Hz BB did not. During the task phase, only the 18-Hz BB resulted in significantly higher accuracy and faster response times compared with the baseline, especially on syntactically more complex object-relative sentences. The behavioral improvement by 18-Hz BB was accompanied by attenuated beta power difference between object- and subject-relative sentences. Altogether, our findings demonstrate beta oscillations as a neural correlate of improved syntactic operation following BB stimulation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jeahong Kim
- School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, United States
- Callier Clinical Research Center, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, United States
| | - Hyun-Woong Kim
- School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, United States
- Callier Clinical Research Center, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, United States
- Center for BrainHealth, The University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX 75235, United States
- Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, United States
| | - Jessica Kovar
- School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, United States
- Callier Clinical Research Center, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, United States
| | - Yune Sang Lee
- School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, United States
- Callier Clinical Research Center, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, United States
- Center for BrainHealth, The University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX 75235, United States
- Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing, The University of Texas at Dallas, 800 W. Campbell Road, Richardson, TX 75080, United States
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