How do binaural beats work?

Moongate features soundscapes containing binaural beats, designed to help you achieve goals like sleep, focus, and relaxation. Each Moongate soundscape is carefully curated to guide your brain into a specific mental state.

By blending carefully selected music and sounds with a binaural beat tuned to a specific frequency, each soundscape creates an immersive environment where the background elements set the mood while the binaural beat gently guides your brain toward the desired outcome.

Brainwaves are patterns of neural activity in the brain. The frequency of these patterns reflect your current mental state, with states of sleep, relaxation, focus manifest as different brainwave frequencies.

Scientific studies have shown that when the brain is exposed to an external source of stimulation at a specific frequency, its activity will begin to align with that frequency. This process, known as brainwave entrainment, shifts the brain into the patterns associated with your desired mental state.

Binaural beats are a form of audio stimulation shown to be effective at inducing brainwave entrainment. The frequency of the beat correlates directly with the mental effect it produces.

After just a few minutes of listening, your brainwaves can begin to synchronize with the binaural beat, gradually shifting toward the desired frequency and mental state.

A binaural beat is formed when two slightly different tones are played, one in each ear. Instead of hearing them separately, your brain perceives the difference between the two tones as a rhythmic “beat.” It’s a bit like an optical illusion for your ears: your brain creates something new that isn’t actually present in the sound itself.

Example:

A 4 Hz beat falls in the delta range, which is associated with deep restorative sleep.

You can hear this effect for yourself. For example, try listening to a 2 Hz pure tone sound in Moongate. You should begin to notice about two gentle pulses per second as the tones in each ear combine inside your brain, producing the subtle rhythm of the binaural beat. The longer you listen, the more clearly this pulsing sensation takes shape—and if you remove one earbud, the beat will disappear entirely.

The effectiveness of binaural beats for brainwave entrainment is supported by a The effectiveness of binaural beats for brainwave entrainment is supported by a growing body of scientific research. Studies using EEG and other brainwave monitoring tools have repeatedly shown that when people are exposed to binaural beats, their brain activity shifts in response to the frequencies being presented.

Researchers have explored this effect across a variety of contexts, including sleep, cognition, relaxation, and anxiety reduction, and the findings consistently confirm that the brain does, in fact, entrain to these beats. Taken together, these studies provide strong evidence that binaural beats are a measurable phenomenon with demonstrable effects on brain activity and mental state.

Moongate takes this science and makes it easy to apply. Each soundscape combines binaural beats with carefully chosen music, ambience, and natural sounds to create immersive sessions that support your goals. Whether you want to sleep more deeply, focus more clearly, or simply relax, Moongate provides an experience that blends artistry with proven neuroscience.