CogniBeats: Neural Entrainment

Programs

Pick a program and a duration; the engine glides the frequency for you and fades out at the end. Keys 1 to 6 switch programs.

Focus

Alpha settle, beta build, gamma focus nested in alpha, then cooldown.

Meditate

Alpha, then Schumann 7.83 Hz, then theta with breathing envelopes.

Sleep

Theta, delta, then deepest delta, with gentle drift.

Energize

Reverse wake-up: delta, theta, alpha, beta.

Free Play

Runs whatever you set under Advanced until you stop it.

Open Hands

A guided session of about 11 minutes for letting go of a habit like skin or nail biting. One line appears per breath while the audio settles from alpha into theta and back. It moves through six stages: arrive, notice your hands, see the habit clearly, close the door on it, anchor a new response, and return.

The anchor

Pressing your fingertips together; the hands on the plate show you when. The session pairs it with a phrase so the two call each other up. Use it whenever an urge shows up: it keeps your hands busy until the urge passes.

Your own lines

Write up to six under Open Hands and they're woven into the session. Lines you write yourself tend to land hardest.

File it

Before the full session, you can write down whatever is on your mind and file it. It stays in the file, untouched, until you come back to it or let it go. Parking worries on paper before rest is a well-supported way to quiet them.

Your plan

An if-then plan in your own words: when I notice this, I do that. Plans phrased this way are among the best-supported tools for following through, so the session rehearses yours during the anchor.

Urge? 60 seconds

The button in the top bar runs a one-minute version for the moment itself: one breath, the gesture, and a line.

Space pauses and resumes a guided session. This is a wellbeing exercise, not treatment. For persistent skin or nail biting, habit reversal training works well; bfrb.org lists specialists.

Ocean breath

Surf that rolls in as you breathe in and draws back as you breathe out. It is modelled on a real surf recording, measured in nine frequency bands: each breath borrows the shape of one of eight real waves, stretched to fit your breathing, with the recording's own balance of lows, mids and highs and its stereo width. No two breaths in a row get the same wave. Close your eyes and let your breathing follow it. It works with every session, and a small breath bar in the player shows the same rhythm.

Paces

Resonant (4 in, 6 out) is about six breaths a minute, the slow-breathing rate most studied for calm. Slow (4 in, 7 out) suits sleep. Easy (4 in, 4 out) is a gentler start. Changing pace keeps your place in the breath.

Guided sessions always breathe 4 in, 6 out, so the waves, the breath bar and the lines move together, and pausing freezes all three.

Breathing figure

The dust on Fig. 1 follows the same breath: it gathers in toward the head as you breathe in and drifts back out as you breathe out, circling slowly, a little faster in the higher brainwave bands. It moves but never flickers. Switch it in the player; it stays still if your device asks for reduced motion.

Making it land

The settings that strengthen entrainment, and why:

Carrier tuned to the rate

The brain responds more strongly to pulsed tones of a few hundred hertz than to very low ones, especially at fast rates, so the pitch rises with the beat: about 160 Hz for deep delta, 320 Hz for alpha, 490 Hz for gamma. It's trimmed so it doesn't get louder. Prefer a darker sound? Choose Low and soft under Advanced.

Pulse in the sea

The ocean and the noise bed carry the beat as well. A broad sound reaches far more of the ear than a single tone. 0% leaves the sea untouched.

Your alpha

Alpha stages use your own alpha rate. Natural alpha varies from about 8 to 12 Hz between people, and rhythms take most easily near where the brain already sits.

Sharp pulses where it counts

Focus and Energize finish on isochronic pulses, the strongest driver. Binaural beats are the weakest, and fade above about 30 Hz. Sleep and Meditate use soft, rounded pulses on purpose, because comfort matters more than strength when you're trying to let go.

You

Closed eyes, headphones, a quiet dim room and at least 15 minutes help as much as any setting. So does paying attention to the sound.

Brainwave frequencies

Gamma (40 Hz)

High-level information processing and peak concentration.

Beta (20 Hz)

Alert consciousness and focused attention.

Alpha (10 Hz)

Relaxed alertness, creativity, and flow states.

Schumann (7.83 Hz)

Grounding, relaxed coherence. Between alpha and theta.

Theta (6 Hz)

Deep relaxation, meditation, and memory consolidation.

Delta (3 / 1 Hz)

Deep, dreamless sleep and physical restoration.

116 Hz

Experimental. Inspired by spectral peaks in Mozart K.448 and Orch-OR microtubule coherence hypotheses (speculative, not standard brainwave entrainment).

Audio modes

Isochronic

Strongest cortical driving. Sharp on/off pulses.

Pulse

Clean rhythmic amplitude modulation.

Dynamic

Breathing envelope for longer sessions.

FM Wobble

Gentle frequency modulation.

Binaural

Headphone-only phantom beat (weak above ~30 Hz).

Hybrid

Binaural carriers gated by the pulse envelope, driving both pathways at once. Best on headphones.

Nest and drift

Nest

Modulates the pulse train with a slower rate (for example 40 Hz pulses inside a 10 Hz swell): cross-frequency coupling.

Drift

Wanders the rate by about 1% so the brain keeps tracking instead of tuning out on long sessions.

Noise and ambience

Noise characters: pink (balanced), brown (deep), white (bright), rain (soft shimmer), ocean (slow swells).

Ambience adds a short stereo diffusion around the tone, softer on headphones for long sessions.

Tonal presets

116 Hz, 432 Hz, 528 Hz and the solfeggio set are rendered as real tones with gentle slow amplitude modulation, not as brainwave pulse rates. Modulation modes apply to the brainwave presets.

How to use

Headphones for anything involving binaural or hybrid. Start at low master volume and let the session run; the fade-out at the end is automatic. Space bar plays and stops.

Safety

Caution. Do not use if prone to seizures. Do not drive while listening. This is a wellbeing tool, not a medical device.

CogniBeats

Session

Breath 1.1

Signal

Primary signal 2.1

Modulation 2.2

Nest and drift 2.3

Secondary layer 2.4

Noise and space 2.5

ProtocolOpen Hands