Gnaural is a programmable "binaural beat generator", based on the principle first described in october 1973 scientific american, gerald oster, auditory beats in the brain. there has been considerable research done on this principle since that publication, and gnaural's predecessor, winaural, has even been used as the audio stimulus in a study published in the proceedings of biomedical engineering 2004, "the induced rhythmic oscillations of neural activity in the human brain", d. cvetkovic, d. djuwari, i. cosic (australia), from proceeding (417) biomedical engineering - 2004.

the central idea of the binaural beat principle is that brain activity can be entrained to the auditory beat frequencies created when each ear is presented simultaneously with tones of slightly-differing frequency. it has been proposed that entrainment can be used to target specific mental states, ranging from restful and meditative to highly alert.

gnaural can output directly to your computer's soundsystem, or to an audio file (.wav format), which you can then burn to an audio cd or compress to mp3 to make available for portable use. stereo headphones are required to maintain the stereo separation of the tones needed for your auditory system to create the binaural beats.