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Bill Briggs writes: Turn on, tune in … download?
The teen fad known as i-Dosing – an allegedly trippy state of ecstasy reached, some claim, by listening through earphones to a pair of carefully mixed audio streams – has led some parents to worry, some teachers to panic and some narcotics authorities to start monitoring the so-called “digital drug.”
Unfamiliar with the notion of getting high via audio file? Websites boast that when repetitive beats are synchronized with brainwaves, it can alter the listener's mood or simulate the feeling of being high.
But one brain expert offers a decidedly blunt, low-tech take on this i-Trend: “It’s really much B.S., honestly,” said Damir Janigro, a Cleveland Clinic neurosurgery researcher. While music has the power to change moods, the medical concept behind i-Dosing is little more than a money-making scheme – just a dose of cyber-snake oil, Janigro adds.
To get the effect, users plug into “i-Dosers” through their headphones. The MP3 downloads (often accompanied by kaleidoscopic videos) send a distinct tone into one ear while simultaneously filling the other ear with staticky, white noise or an electrical hum, allegedly changing brain waves and bathing listeners in euphoric bliss. At least one track mixed in what sounded like a woman having an orgasm.
YouTube contains a number of free i-Dose “sound drugs,” including “Leviticus Green” or “Gates of Hades” which instructs people to listen alone in a dark room to maximize the “hallucinogenic effects.” Several websites sell i-Dose downloads for everything from smoking cessation to anxiety relief. They can cost about $20 for a 55-minute audio sample.
The grown-up hysteria over i-Dosing started with some YouTube videos that show users looking freaked out as they listen to the trippy tracks. Because i-Dosing fans – usually teenagers – claim they reach altered states through these sound streams, scattered packs of authorities have wagged their fingers at the practice. In March, three students at an Oklahoma high school were ordered to the principal’s office for admittedly i-Dosing. Consequently, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics said it was “concerned” about the fad because some i-Dosing websites offer links to buy prescription drugs or marijuana.
The late Timothy Leary would have undoubtedly loved the hoopla. But Janigro, a music aficionado who collaborated on the Cleveland Clinic’s study of deep brain stimulation, says i-Dosing is a medical dud. Any effects shown by users, he believes, are either triggered by the accompanying use of marijuana or simply by the power of suggestion.
“I really don’t think there is any danger in this,” Janigro says. “People are trying to make money ... simply using the same music that we’ve always had.”
Indeed, music can affect disposition: that’s why music is played at funerals, Janigro says. That’s why exercisers often tune into songs while working out. But the impact varies with each person. For some, “Beethoven makes them cry, for others Beethoven makes them bored.”
What’s more, sending one tone and beat into one ear, and another tone and beat into the opposite ear is as old as Beethoven – and symphony attendees don’t walk out stoned or craving munchies.
“Your awareness of music is bilateral: you hear music with both sides of your brain,” Janigro says. “At every orchestra, the strings on the left may be playing in three-quarter (time) and the cellos on the right in two quarter. So that’s nothing new.”
What i-Dosing fans ignore is “that [what comes through the right and left] ear canals are both crossing in the brain,” says Janigro. It’s not that the sound that goes into right ear goes to right side of your brain, or the left ear goes to the left side. “They cross so that in the left brain you hear from both ears and in the right brain you hear from both ears.”
Getting high digitally? “I don’t think there is a future in it,” he says.
Then, knowing kids, fads and scams of all types, the researcher quickly corrects himself.
“I don’t think there is any honest future in it.”
What do you think about i-Dosing? Is it a real danger -- or simply B.S., as Janigro puts it? Tell us in the comments.
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Simply BS. I tried it a while back (for free, darkened room and all) and got nothing from it. Utter nonsense. I guess I'm just not easily influenced enough to get any kind of placebo effect from it like others say they do.
I-Dosing. I like the gag; doesn't it mean you like music? There should be a new law against listening to sound. This disgusting trend will obviously lead many of our youngsters to heroin addiction!
Remember, you can be arrested for just looking at certain things too. The government's job is to protect us from all that we want to eat, drink, smoke, sniff, touch, see and listen to.
I am at work and dosing right now, man I am high!
Please protect me from myself, you could say that water gets you high and some offical will ban it too!
Its not about the music being trippy, its about beta wave interruption. This is not common either. Gregorian chants and tribes in south america use music to enter into a meditative state. In South America shamans use a psychedelic plant called Ayhuasca in the medatative process to enhance the spiritual properties through beta wave interruption. Its like staring into those optical illusion books to see the picture hidden among the pattern. You're staring so hard you cross your eyes a little and space out a bit. Thats a form of beta wave interruption.
nice post thanks
Affilojetpack
Nevermind... not worth the effort
These "binaural beats" can be heard on youtube and downloaded for free from other sites. They can be used in meditation as well and are sometimes found on meditation cd's so maybe they're a good thing. Just because teenagers like it, doesn't mean it's bad.
Exactly. Thank you.
Poor kids; never got to go to a live Grateful Dead show. This is old technology, folks, nothing new here.
This writer and this researcher are both hacks. Anyone who spends even a few hours researching this will find TONS of material on binaural beats, plenty of iPhone applications, plenty of CDs and other resources that these 2 hacks could have experienced THEMSELVES instead of talking out their rear-ends. Sure, not all binaural programs are equal, but some can be very powerful, and can induce all sorts of effects. Not that the kids in the videos aren't exaggerating those effects for attention, I'm sure they are, but that doesn't mean binaural recordings can't have a distinct and repeatable effect.
The researcher's comparison of binaural beats to listening to regular music or sound is invalid - regular music or sound is not designed with the frequency split that binaural recordings are. The whole point is that this is sound that is designed with a specific intention, and music is typically designed with a different intention. Again, either the writer of this article or the hack "researcher" could have verified these things if they had bothered to do anything but conjecture based on their prejudices - not exactly the scientific method, eh?
If you want to validate these things for yourself and have an iPhone, get the free versions of apps like Pzizz and Mindwave. Listen to either of those for 30 minutes and then tell me that your experience was entirely due to wanting to believe it will work. But as far as I'm concerned, Pzizz has helped me far more with relaxing from anxiety than any medication, exercise or other commonly recommended practice, so personally I could care less if it's placebo, I'm getting the response I want.
so you are saying that it I make misic with another intent that it will hapen?
I am making a new song that makes you smart and rich, and according to your logic that will make it happen???
Just reply to this post with your credit card # and i will send it to you.
or click here, www.wtf,you,have,to,be,kidding,or,just,dumb.com
gov emp, way to completely fail to understand what the previous poster said.
Yeah, seriously. There has been a lot of research into brainwave manipulation via sound. Just like Lights flashing at a certain pace can trigger certain responses in the brain, so can certain pulses of other EM radiation and sound. I-dosing itself probably is a fraud, I myself have never had anything more than an earache from any of it, but the concept is very real.
Henry Ford said "if you believe you can or if you believe you can't , you are right!" I see this a sort of a placebo effect. People believe it works so their subconcious gives them a euphoric feeling. The science says this doesn't work, but if people buy into it (literally and figuratively) then they program their mind to feeling relaxed or high or whatever result they belive will occur. The subconcious just responds to what they believe and expect!
Sandwiched between fart and vuvuzela apps - "for entertainment purposes only".
This isn't BS, or the concept isn't. I don't think it is a danger either.
What SHOULD happen is when you lay down and remove all external stimuli (visual and hearing) your brain begins to create stimuli. It's almost like a waking dream.
Eh Miss-type, your brain can't create stimuli but it will create perceptions.
Your brain physically can't create a stimuli i.e. the definition of a stimuli is something external BUT a perception is what your brain creates. We both are talking about the same thing just wrong name.
No no, your brain actually stimulates your nerve cells in your eyes and ears. You literally see & hear stuff that your brain creates. It creates what might be called internal stimuli. It's different than perception because it's still going through the proper stimuli channels.
No, an internal stimuli is a perception. You are PERCEIVING those stimuli. We're talking about the same thing but a stimuli by definition has to act on one of your senses (i.e. smelling, hearing). When your brain creates those it creates a perception, not stimuli.
It does act on your senses though. The stimuli begin at the nerves that are directly connected to your eyes and ears (& other sense organs). In fact, your ear actually produces sound and some of what you hear is that. Most of this isn't even produced by your brain, it's produced by the nerves connected to your sense organs and then sent to your brain. The only way that "internal stimuli" could be considered to be more stimuli would be if your eyes created light as well (I'm pretty sure they don't)
The word perception refers to how signals are interpreted, not to the signals themselves, but your sense organs actually create their own signals.
I am with Doberman. There is a lot of clinically controlled trial support for binaural beats having effects on the brain. The effects are rarely instantaneous and occur on a gross level-- not something so specific as having a particular hallucination.
This technology and its research began in the 70s with expert meditators and monks. Researchers found that particular types of brain waves could be induced through the administration of tones at a given frequency, more specifically, the difference in Hz between the tones corresponded to the brain wave type "entrained."
The technology has been useful in helping people meditate, achieve particular states or brainwave types more quickly in meditation and more quickly providing the health benefits of meditation. It's not a quick high in the least, but it's interesting and possibly healing.
I tried a couple of these I-doses a few months ago. In one of the hallucination simulations I actually was able to get some light visuals after a while. However, I've achieved similar results without the use of I-doses just through meditation. Personally I believe it is more of a 'power of suggestion' kind of thing, providing you the environment to let your brain wonder and experience what it's completely capable of doing on its own.
If you tell young people you can trip just by closing your eyes and meditating they might say you're crazy. Tell them you can trip just by listening to this song on an IPod with a towel wrapped around your face and they'll be more apt to believe it and try it.
I doubt this poses any danger. The effects are nothing compared to real hallucinogens and most people will lose interest quickly as it actually takes some effort to achieve any effects. Some will argue that it will be a gateway to trying other drugs. Young people are going to try them any ways. It's in our rebellious nature to want to try things change our perception of the world, especially when those things are illegal. If hallucinogens weren't so taboo, I doubt half as many people would be doing them as there is.
Probably a bit of both. The principal is very old indeed. The "sound baths" offered at the late George Van Tassel's amazing Integratron out in Landers, California http://integratron.com/ work on very much the same principle.
Incidentally, I adored Spirit Channel's comment---each generation thinks they have discovered something new when it is really very old. George Van Tassel (whose Integratron I gave a link to in my previous post) was working with sound and meditation back in the 1950s and the principle was thousands of years old even then.
its silly what people can believe, sounds like a trippy visualizer nothing more. I doubt too many people actually use these trying to get high, though i wouldnt be surprised if people use these after they get high for a little bit of fun
5 years ago this was know as getting " HYPHY! "
Mac Dre Lives On FOREVER !!!!
Shout out to Vallejo !!!
Bands like Tool have been using these beats and frequencies for years.
Sad really....People are quite pathetic and you can sell them just about anything... I do believe that sound can alter your mood and that what you visualize when you close your eyes (unless you've got some underlying medical condition that predisposes you otherwise) can be dependent on the mood you are in as a result of a stimulus like sound or scent.
The type of music I listen to depends on the mood I am in or the mood I want to be in. To me, being in a good mood (which can mean relaxed or cranking a workout) is being high. I'll take good music over some crap noise or chemical that may or may not (obviously depending on your own point of view) get me there any day!
It's just one more thing for the self-appointed virtue police to chirp about. Why can't they just mind their own effing business.
Random neuroscience researchers rarely know the science behind new fads. He sounds like he either heard some bad examples of this or thought he was being asked his opinion about techno. The real "audio highs" are sounds that were produced by using the classic scientific method of "using what works".
Scientists noticed, by watching mRI machines, that if they put certain sounds in your ears (like say, a repetitive drum beat and 2 different notes in each ear that couldn't possibly exist in nature without also hearing interference) that your brain sometimes does weird things.
Repetitive drum beats resonate with the brain waves that occur on the same frequency.
Listening to 2 notes in each ear that would interfere naturally sometimes causes you hallucinate extra notes to make up for the loss of interference. Apparently it does some other things too and it's sometimes used as a treatment for Parkinson's.
But listening to an hour long techno that cost you $20 with headphones in a dark room isn't going to do anything out of the ordinary. In fact, if you payed anything more than $1, you got ripped off. These have been around for decades and you can find them for free.
But....... Take a listen to the clang bang that is called music today. LIsten and let it drive you crazy.'
See what it is doing the world over. everyone going mad.
The comments are as funny as the article.
Music will stir emotions and music will allow you to be more susceptible to influence because you tend to not filter the content like normal speech. It allows you to concentrate better from my subjective life experience. But I would venture that the i-dosing is more of a form of mild hypnotism, power of suggestion. They expect a certain result and therefore experience it. The brain is pretty powerful in that respect. It is a basis of many religious experiences.
Can you tell me more about the Parkinson's treatment you mentioned? Thanks.
If teenagers can get high with just sounds rather than pill popping or smoking, than I think it's a good thing. At least they won't die from it.
Unfortunately, some of the stronger tracks can manifest physical effects that resemble the side effects of the drug they are trying to mimic. For example the Meth track can have very detrimental effects on the user if used for extended periods.
bbbbssss
Music sounds the same way, if you're on enough acid.
The comments that keep popping up here associate 'I-Dosers' with simple music, when nothing could be further from the truth. Although I-Dosers are the bastard child of binaural beat brain entrainment they are based on science & not a placebo effect. The basic concept is that 1 frequency is played in 1 ear & a different frequency is played in the other. The brain syncs to the difference between the two frequencies & then resonates to that frequency which physically alters the mind state. The concept was discovered in the late 1830's & has been researched since. Presently the science has evolved beyond binaural beats (which were only effective when listened to with headphones) & progressed to monaural and now to isochronic tones (which do not require the use of headphones) which are light years beyond binaural beats in theri efficacy. I-Dosers were basically public domain attempts by individuals to simulate the effects of every conceivable brain state be it a state induced by a psychotropic substance, lucid dreaming or even an out of body experience. These laymen retro-engineered the different brain states from EEG records associated with each brain state/substance & simply tried to create a binaural beat that they felt most closely resembled that effect. There are several studies which prove that certain binaural beats can make the brain create massive amounts of HGH & other neurochemicals simply by listening to the correct track for extended periods of time. But, yes 'I-Dosers' are very watered down versions of this technology. I would be more concerned when someone finally decides to translate the 'I-Doser' tracks into isochronic, then you may see a real 'virtual drug' problem arise.
Back in the 70s it was smoking banana peels would get you high. Could you imagine the Government outlawing bananas or music for that matter. A lot of teens clamed they got high from it & bananas were flying off the shelves. Oh the folly of youth, ya gotta love it!
Has anybody here ever watched the movie, "Altered States"? DUH.
Also, has anybody experienced the phenomena of "disease of the month"?
It's when something is publicised and suddenly a whole bunch of (usually) teens suddenly have all of these symptoms of something they had never heard of before.
THOSE things are real, to the point of needing some serious attention and time and direction from the adults in their lives.