Dancing brainwaves: How sound reshapes your brain networks in real time
50 comments
·June 8, 2025rubicon33
Sounds cliche, silly, etc. but music really is magic. Such an abstract thing that can produce wide ranges of emotions and even help focus and inspire.
I find a lot of electronic music helpful for coding.
Some bangers for anyone interested:
Age Of Love - The Age Of Love (Charlotte de Witte & Enrico Sangiuliano Remix) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YVvcTIGy40
Nero - My Eyes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiojdDs8wwk
SUB FOCUS x WILKINSON @ Corfe Castle, Dorset https://youtu.be/TRh-amAhOEw?si=jCx1V7jkciB3h4kh
Adventure Club - Gold (Ft. Yuna) https://youtu.be/09wdQP1FFR0?si=r7hfA6w3qfhXzL30
melvinroest
DnB is my jam, I’m a fan of sub focus and wilkinson.
Here is 37 hours of DnB [1]. Here is 30 hours of mostly house [2].
[1] https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6a14gkr30nOOr8Eu9T34tE?si=...
[2] https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3BUgKCDAWvcDa28MVToIFM?si=...
specproc
Big up the DnB crew. I like it dirtier when out, but love a bit of liquid to code to.
For sessions:
Big Bud: Infinity + Infinity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYEuCcMZB_o
LTJ Bukem: Logical Progressions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZK_0dgj43s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYqDVqYSTxs
And a few select cuts:
Calibre & High Contrast: Mr Majestic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nswe73umPQk
Hybrid Minds / Daughter: Youth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RUWkv4Ray8
Hybrid Minds: Touch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AKSpPkZAuE
benchly
These replies are fantastic, thanks all.
I recently (last few years) discovered that not only do I like DnB, but there is something about it that keeps the anxiety goblin in my brain occupied the same way one might distract an unruly child with a video game or something equally engaging. Contrast to what the poo-poo'ers say, the organized chaos that it brings to my table actually _helps_ me regain a bit of my higher-order thinking, especially when troubleshooting.
Calibre is a fav, but already mentioned so I offer up another favorite of mine for those looking for something a bit more fluid with a nostalgia kick.
Level Select by Pizza Hotline: https://pizzahotline.bandcamp.com/album/level-select
replete
Yoink!
Liquid DnB is my goto flow state hack:
18 hours spotify playlist of my faves: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2GKgNjMOLu9GYy1puVknIJ?si=...
Only thing to be aware of is that Spotify's shuffle is not a true shuffle, it's a shuffle designed to earn them the most money so you might have noticed the same tracks repeat themselves in a massive playlist, others don't play at all. Unfortunately the solution is to use on of those spotify API websites to dupe the playlist with a shuffle and play it in a shuffled order.
orbit7
I agree music is very useful for switching things up a gear, from down tempo through to very high bpm such as: https://open.spotify.com/album/3f8egS9LhMlx6S3YqJdl3z?si=Fo1...
tylervigen
This article’s title, subtitle, summary, and first two paragraphs all contain some version of the phrase “reshapes your brains internal networks in real time.” I thought I was going crazy after I read the same thing six times.
shironandonon_
this site that has been previously posted on HN works well:
https://musicforprogramming.net/
Otherwise agree with psytrance / goa mixes. Techno can be good too if you are tired (eg: Sara Landry, 999999999). Trance can help to uplift if you are depressed. Classical to make you feel more ordered.. I love dubstep in my brain but it creates patterns that are counter-intuitive to doing any work — that genre makes me feel “free”.
benchly
Thanks for sharing, I've not seen that site before and this is very much in-line with my own discovery about using music to help with my anxiety. The About blurb really sums it up. Wild, because had anyone presented such claims to me 20 years ago, I would have waved them away as bullpucky peddlers. Now, DnB + other electronic genres are dosed daily while at work through my headphones and I'm better for it.
Interesting that dubstep makes you feel free! I would not describe my experience like that, but it does tend to raise my aggression a bit, so I usually avoid it unless its crunch time. Your comment has me wondering about different experiences than mine. My DnB picks are more soothing to me, but sound too chaotic and "all over the place" for my wife's ADHD.
chrisweekly
Related tangent - here's my carefully-curated "flowstate" Spotify playlist consisting of tracks w/ no lyrics and a variety of moods. I pick one that suits me in the moment and put it on repeat. I find it boosts my focus and energy and is very helpful in attaining flowstate, for problem-solving or Cal Newport-style "deep work" sessions.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UScdOAlqXqWTOmXFgQhFA?si=...
kranner
I've always thought of songs with human vocals as cries of conspecifics, impossible to ignore and thus highly distracting.
dgfl
Not sure if that’s because I’m not a native speaker, but unless I make a conscious and quite tiresome effort to listen to the lyrics, the human voice is just another instrument among many.
robviren
I do still actively wonder what portion of the effects are real vs placebo in audio "treatments". I'm not certain I am sold on things like binaural beats and such, but I do believe that pleasing music that relaxes the brain for a person can be real. It's just highly person dependent. One persons calming effect with hard rock is another person's anxiety source. Would be incredible if it allowed for better understanding of this.
agumonkey
I was regularly surprised how music could restore 'colors' in my emotions even in the darkest times. Quite mind-blowing that something that looks completely abstract and removed from evolutionary advantage could have so much impact.
skeledrew
Binaural beats usage has worked pretty well for me in the past. Maybe think of it as the most pure form music (from a functional perspective) can take.
kator
A little better link here with a link to the detailed article, too.
https://health.au.dk/en/display/artikel/dansende-hjerneboelg...
Meanwhile, it's interesting that I do find I can focus deeper on code with certain types of music. I also have certain music I listen to when I want to write a document, such as a PRFAQ or some narrative. I've always assumed I was just "programming" myself for these modes, and the music was reminding me of the mode I was in. Perhaps it's a little of both.
some1else
There's very little in the article about "how" sound reshapes "networks" in the brain. It's pretty reasonable to expect that hearing different sounds can cause different neurons to fire, though (considering you can upload information into somebody's brain by talking to them).
quantadev
The important discovery is not that sensory experiences correlate strongly with specific areas of the brain. That's been known for decades. What I think is possibly new here is that the musical waves are genuinely getting "in sync" (temporally). Neuron firing is too slow for this to happen due to the normal conventional interpretation of how the brain works, which is that info travels from synapse to synapse. It essentially disproves the "calculational" (synapse based) model of consciousness, and it proves that even qualia itself is based on waves.
Sure it's possible that something akin to simple harmonic oscillator spontaneous synchronization could be happening (i.e. this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RYeNu159Sgc) but even if this 'dumb' sync is playing a role it still isn't evidence against the wave-based nature of qualia.
southernplaces7
A while back someone on this site posted a link to a music channel that fused the sound of an SFPD police dispatcher with an ecclectic mix of low-key electronic type music. Can't find it since but really liked it. Anyone here know what i'm describing?
ews
mpv https://somafm.com/sf1033.pls on the cli will make that work
thenthenthen
Should be this: https://youarelistening.to/
southernplaces7
No actually. I remember that it was a green/black sort of site color scheme, but no worries, thanks for this. It's pretty damn good!
hmm37
Are you talking about soma.fm?
skeledrew
Did this reconfig-by-sound a lot in college using binaural beats. While others use coffee and other chemicals I'd just pop in my earphones and play a beat sequence for whatever the needed purpose, whether extreme focus, a power nap, enhanced creativity, etc. Worked pretty well, though I'd feel nuked for a while after extended usage.
quantadev
There's a specific frequency of brain waves which are always correlated with wakeful consciousness. I never looked up whether 'binaural' stuff is normal in that same freq range or the lower ranges. The lower freq ranges are still present even during unconsciousness (or anesthesia), and so focusing the brain on those frequencies would either 1) help concentration or 2) help sleep? I'm not sure which.
EGreg
How exactly did you feel afterwards? Could you list the different beat patterns (or link to an example) and the result?
Especially power nap lol
skeledrew
It's a bit hard to describe: a kind of extremely worn out and braindead feeling. But that's usually after using it for several hours on end. The brain just isn't designed to be forced into a particular state for extended periods I guess.
My goto was the Gnaural app[0], but it's been a dead project for some time. Still have the app on my phone though, in case I want to do quick dives. There are other implementations and also audio files out there, but I never found anything as good for my use case.
Obscurity4340
BrainWave advance binaural programs is probably very similar, has different tracks implying the desired effect. Some of them definitely help with what they arr supposed to, morning coffee and deep relaxation are consistent with their naming
pedalpete
I work in neurotech with auditory stimulation, so you'd think I'd be a big fan of this area of research, and I think the authors have done a decent job of suggesting the limitations, but the title itself gets picked up and people read a lot into what they think this is saying. Or maybe I'm just a bit jaded.
They provide a 2.4 Hz stimulus and then measure frequency-matched activity across brain networks. They suggest some novel methods of measuring how the signal traverses the brain, but they don't suggest why it does, which is good. They do say this is unlikely to be entrainment, I'll get into that more in a bit.
We shouldn't be surprised that auditory stimulation produces frequency-matched activity across distributed brain regions. The auditory system naturally routes information across multiple interconnected networks. The auditory system picks it up, but the auditory system is also not siloed into a single area of the brain. No brain systems are, we have replication, and this is just showing the the nervous system is passing the signal throughout the brain. In no way does it suggest that this is related to thought, consciousness, focus, or that these frequency-matched responses reflect any functional change in brain state.
When people talk about entrainment, that is a real thing. But the word itself describes when systems synchronize, not that they will.
I guess I'm cautious about papers like these because of our work in neurostimulation and sleep where we use phase-targeted auditory stimulation to enhance slow-wave activity. Basically increasing sleep's restorative function.
In our work it isn't this sort of "gentle tones to help you sleep", or "activating networks to alter brain activity", which is an area I see a lot of snake-oil and nonsense.
The way closed-loop phase-targeted slow-wave enhancement works is by "interrupting" the brain during the synchronous firing of neurons, which (it is believed) triggers a protective mechanism in the brain and as a response, the brain increases the synchronous firing of neurons. We're talking about very short (50ms) interruptions.
I get my back up a bit when I hear about this idea that reading electrical activity of the brain and making broad assumptions about what they "mean". I've been invited to speak on a panel July 2nd with Australia's Commissioner of Human Rights to discuss ethical safety around EEG data, and while I do believe we need to protect bio-data, I don't believe in the "electrical activity means we can read or alter your thoughts" camp.
If you want to know more about our work, you can check out https://affectablesleep.com, and if you're in Sydney, and want to come to the talk, I can't find a link atm, but it's at the Sydney Knowledge Hub on July 2nd., part of the Sydney Neurotech Meetup
Lu2025
This is why I use Instagram on silent. I don't want them to influence me too much.
I’ve always felt that certain sounds or music really affect how focused I am. Background noise from a café, for example, actually helps me concentrate and makes writing feel easier.
It’s kind of amazing when you think about it. Makes me want to experiment more and see if sound can actually “tune” the brain to boost focus or improve mood.