Subject: auditory stimuli for relaxation From: Christian Kaernbach <auditorylist@xxxxxxxx> Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2007 10:44:43 +0100 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Dear Listers, We are currently looking for good auditory stimuli for relaxation. In a typical experiment with galvanic skin recording we have a 15 to 20 minutes pause between the instruction and the start of the experiment. The better the subject is able to relax during this period, the better the signal-to-noise ratio should be in the following experiment. We consider white noise, pink noise, amplitude modulated noise, recordings of the roar of the surf, relaxation music, and for all these stimuli: mono vs. stereo, free field vs. headphones. We know of some studies in the realm of anesthesia research. We would be happy to learn of any other relevant study on the effect of different auditory stimuli on relaxation. BTW [side topic]: in anesthesia we found some references to "binaural beats" (embedding two sinusoids of slightly different frequency in pink noise, one in each ear). They should improve relaxation (and even entrain EEG rhythms). Is this serious? Best regards, Christian -- Prof. Dr. Christian Kaernbach Allgemeine Psychologie Institut für Psychologie Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel Olshausenstr. 62 D-24098 Kiel Germany www.kaernbach.de