BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Health Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1539823
Beating stress: Music with monaural beats reduces anxiety and improves mood in a non-clinical population
Provisionally accepted
- 1Universal Music Group, London, United Kingdom
- 2School of Advanced Study, London, United Kingdom
- 3Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands
- 4Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States
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Auditory beat stimulation in the delta-theta frequency range (0-7 Hz) is gaining interest as a noninvasive intervention for anxiety. This study investigated the effects of a relatively understudied form-monaural beats-and whether they produce acute changes in anxiety and mood when presented alone or embedded harmonically within music. Participants (n = 308) were randomly assigned to one of three 30-minute listening conditions: (1) Monaural Beats + Music, (2) Monaural Beats-Only, or (3) a Pure Tone Control. Psychological effects were assessed via changes in self-reported anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, state subscale) and mood (bipolar Likert scales for emotional valence, arousal, and energy). The results showed that only the Beats + Music condition had a significant and medium effect sized reduction in anxiety from before to after listening (p < .001, d = -.58). Furthermore, only the Beats + Music condition had a significant and medium effect sized increase in emotional valence from before to after listening (p < .001, d = .48). Finally, the Beats-Only condition showed a slight significant reduction in energy from before to after listening (p <0.05, d = -.28) These findings indicate that monaural beats can be harmoniously integrated into music without diminishing its anxiolytic properties, whereas presentation alone has different effects. This suggests that integrating monaural beats within music may be a viable approach for targeted auditory neuromodulation.
Keywords: auditory beats, Monoaural beats, Music, Anxiety, affect afex, STATs, effectsize Font: Italic Formatted: Font: (Default) Times New Roman, 12 pt
Received: 16 Mar 2025; Accepted: 14 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Venkatesan, Demetriou, Bowling and Koops. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tara Venkatesan, Universal Music Group, London, United Kingdom
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