Sometimes, just ten minutes are enough for the brain to change its operating mode. Not with medication, but through a combination of poetry, nature sounds, and mindful attention practice.
This is precisely what an international team of researchers led by Hercules Moraes attempted to investigate. Their pilot study, published on July 28, 2026, in Frontiers in Psychology, was one of the first attempts to study how short artistic-contemplative audio programs affect brain electrical activity.
Only twelve healthy adult volunteers participated in the experiment. Each listened to ten-minute "sound capsules" combining poetic texts, soundscapes, and instructions for mindful attention practice. Throughout the session, researchers continuously recorded electroencephalograms.
One indicator turned out to be the most interesting. During listening, the power of the high-frequency beta rhythm (20–30 Hz) reliably decreased, and after the recording ended, it returned to the baseline level. Meanwhile, alpha, theta, delta, mu rhythms, and the low-frequency beta range remained practically unchanged.
The high-frequency beta rhythm is usually associated with active control of ongoing events, constant environmental analysis, and readiness for rapid response. Therefore, its decrease can be understood as a moment when the brain's internal "dispatcher" becomes less tense.
But does this mean that a person enters a special aesthetic state of consciousness?
From the perspective of predictive processing theory, a decrease in beta activity might suggest that the brain stops comparing ongoing events with its expectations so persistently and begins to pay more attention to internal sensations. However, the same effect can occur during ordinary relaxation or reduced concentration on the external world. EEG data alone is insufficient to distinguish between these possibilities.
It is interesting to consider the results through the prism of modern consciousness theories.
According to global workspace theory, conscious perception is accompanied by the widespread distribution of information across various brain areas. Here, researchers observed only a localized decrease in activity within one frequency band.
However, the recurrence processing theory, proposed by Dutch neurobiologist Victor Lamme, suggests that subjective experience can arise even before information becomes accessible to the entire brain network. In this case, a person may indeed experience deep aesthetic immersion, even if the EEG only registers very modest changes.
Imagine a radio receiver. While it is continuously scanning for stations, there is a lot of interference and internal processing. But once it tunes precisely to the desired station, the internal "noise" decreases. The experience of the music itself cannot be seen by merely observing the electronic circuits. A similar situation might occur with the brain: a decrease in the beta rhythm is not yet proof of a special "neural marker of beauty."
