It's three o'clock in the morning the day of the organic chemistry final exam. You can barely keep your eyes open, and several weeks of material is still left unstudied in your notebook. Is this a hopeless situation? Not if you ask F. Holmes Atwater, Research Director at the Monroe Institute, which is located near the University in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
He might advise you to put on a pair of headphones and listen to one of the many tapes designed by the Monroe Institute to increase attentiveness by altering the mental state of the brain.
The Monroe Institute, founded by Robert Monroe, a pioneer in the field of out-of-body-experience research, is a nonprofit organization that studies the effects of sound patterns on the brain. Findings are used to develop audio cassettes which are marketed by an affiliated company, Interstate Industries, Inc.
The company claims its tapes allow people to change between states of consciousness, such as dreaming, being awake, alert or asleep. Certain states of consciousness have specific brain-wave states that the Institute claims can be induced by listening to distinct sound patterns.
In addition to researching sound patterns, the Institute has overnight programs held at the Nancy Penn Center, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Charlottesville. Some programs last as long as six days and can cost as much as $1,300.
Although the Institute claims there are millions of people who use its technology, some question whether or not it really works.
Assoc. Psychology Prof. Daniel Willingham said he was skeptical of the claims made by the Monroe Institute concerning learning and memory. Willingham argued that a causal link has not been established between brain-wave state and learning.
"The kinds of things that we know help memory do not have characteristic [electroencephalogram] EEG signatures associated with them," he said.
"The idea that if you're in a particular brain state that that would make a qualitative difference to memory, I would say is very suspect," he added.
The institute says Hemi-Sync, an abbreviation of hemispheric synchronization, is at the basis of the services they provide. The technology uses binaural beating - the normal response of the brain when different sounds are heard in each ear - to alter states of consciousness.
In binaural beating, the brain can detect the difference between the two sounds. In everyday life, this information is used to tell direction. When two sounds are presented with stereo headphones, the brain combines them to produce a third sound, the binaural beat. The perceived sound is very rhythmic in nature and has a frequency equivalent to the difference between the frequencies of the first two sounds.
The process of binaural beating is a documented phenomenon which can be measured with an EEG, a device which measures the electrical activity of the brain, Atwater said.
Brain waves are patterns of electrical activity detected using an EEG. Certain distinctive brain-wave patterns with different ranges of frequencies are given names such as alpha, theta or delta.
A lot of the neurons in the cortex of the brain have an intrinsic oscillating rhythm, Biology Prof. DeForrest Mellon Jr. said. But all the cells may not be in sync with each other. This changes whenever the brain is stimulated. Cells in the stimulated area will oscillate in synchrony like people in a stadium doing the wave.
"When a large percentage of [the neurons] are oscillating, changing their electrical potentials in synchrony with one another, that's when you see waves like theta waves that we can recognize," Mellon said.
Based on research conducted at the Monroe Institute, tapes and compact discs have been developed that use binaural beating in conjunction with other sounds or music to achieve a particular brain wave state.
Atwater said the theta state is more conducive to learning. The tapes aim to achieve a brain-wave state that is beneficial to the activity that you are attempting to perform.
According to Willingham, if what the Monroe Institute claims about learning is true, "it would blow the lid off of much of what we do in education."
But, until a study is published that validates such a claim, that is all it is - just a claim.
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