PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Hector D Orozco Perez AU - Guillaume Dumas AU - Alexandre Lehmann TI - Binaural beats through the auditory pathway: from brainstem to connectivity patterns AID - 10.1523/ENEURO.0232-19.2020 DP - 2020 Feb 17 TA - eneuro PG - ENEURO.0232-19.2020 4099 - http://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2020/02/07/ENEURO.0232-19.2020.short 4100 - http://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2020/02/07/ENEURO.0232-19.2020.full AB - Binaural beating is a perceptual auditory illusion occurring when presenting two neighboring frequencies to each ear separately. Several controversial claims have been attributed to binaural beats regarding their ability to entrain human brain activity and mood, in both the scientific literature and the marketing realm. Here, we sought to address those questions in a robust fashion using a single-blind, active-controlled protocol. To do so, we compared the effects of binaural beats with a control beat stimulation (monaural beats, known to entrain brain activity but not mood) across four distinct levels in the human auditory pathway: subcortical and cortical entrainment, scalp-level Functional Connectivity and self-reports. Both stimuli elicited standard subcortical responses at the pure tone frequencies of the stimulus (i.e., Frequency Following Response), and entrained the cortex at the beat frequency (i.e., Auditory Steady State Response). Furthermore, Functional Connectivity patterns were modulated differentially by both kinds of stimuli, with binaural beats being the only one eliciting cross-frequency activity. Despite this, we did not find any mood modulation related to our experimental manipulation. Our results provide evidence that binaural beats elicit cross frequency connectivity patterns, but weakly entrain the cortex when compared to monaural beat stimuli. Whether binaural beats have an impact on cognitive performance or other mood measurements remains to be seen and can be further investigated within the proposed methodological framework.Significance Statement Binaural beats have been a source of speculation and debate in the scientific community. Our study addresses controversial claims and approaches them using proper experimental control and modern signal processing techniques. Here we show that binaural beats can both entrain the cortex and elicit specific connectivity patterns. Regardless of this, our monaural control condition was able to entrain the cortex more strongly, and both binaural beats and the control condition failed to regulate mood. All in all, though binaural beats entrain cortical activity and elicit complex patterns of connectivity, the functional significance (if any) of binaural beats, and whether they are more “special” than monaural beats remain open questions.