How to Increase Gamma Brain Waves

In short

• Gamma waves are the fastest common rhythm in the brain, from roughly 30 Hz up to 100 Hz and beyond, and they are linked to attention, memory and binding information together.
• The best-supported way to increase gamma activity is sustained mental training. Long-term meditators show markedly higher gamma activity than people who do not meditate.
• Focused attention raises gamma in the moment, and neurofeedback studies show people can learn to increase their own gamma activity.
• Research on 40 Hz light and sound stimulation is early, mostly done in mice, and labs disagree about the results.
• Gamma is hard to measure from the scalp, because muscle activity produces signals in the same range, so read big claims carefully.
  

To increase gamma brain waves, the strongest evidence points to sustained mental training: long-term meditation practice, focused attention, and neurofeedback. Studies of experienced meditators have recorded some of the highest gamma activity ever measured with scalp EEG, and neurofeedback studies show people can learn to raise their own gamma. Shortcuts such as 40 Hz light and sound are an active research area, but the evidence in people is still early.

Here is what gamma waves are, what the research supports, and where the open questions are.

What gamma brain waves are

Your brain's electrical activity rises and falls in rhythms, measured in cycles per second, or hertz (Hz). The slower rhythms, delta, theta and alpha, dominate in sleep, drowsiness and relaxed rest. Beta dominates during active thinking. Gamma is the fastest band, usually defined as starting around 30 Hz, with much of the research centered near 40 Hz.

The brain never runs on one rhythm at a time. All of the bands are present all the time, and what changes is the mix.

Gamma rhythms are generated when networks of excitatory neurons and fast inhibitory neurons fire in tight, repeating cycles. Neuroscientists have proposed that this timing helps groups of neurons communicate: neurons that fire in sync within a gamma cycle pass information to each other more effectively. That is why gamma is linked to processes that need information brought together, such as attention, perception and memory.

Why gamma is hard to measure

Gamma is the band most easily confused with noise. The skull dampens fast brain signals before they reach the scalp, and the muscles of the face, jaw and scalp produce electrical activity in the same frequency range. In a study that recorded scalp EEG from people under temporary, medically supervised muscle paralysis, much of the activity above 20 Hz disappeared, showing how much of it can come from muscle. Another study found that tiny, involuntary eye movements can produce a burst in the gamma range that looks like a brain response.

This does not mean gamma research is unreliable. Good studies control for these artifacts. It does mean that any device or app claiming to show your gamma should be judged on how carefully it handles them.

How to increase gamma brain waves: what the research supports

1. Long-term meditation practice

This is the most cited finding in gamma research. In a 2004 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Wisconsin recorded EEG from long-term Buddhist practitioners with 10,000 to 50,000 hours of practice. During meditation, the practitioners produced sustained, high-amplitude gamma activity and gamma synchrony, far above that of a comparison group of new meditators. Their gamma was also higher at rest before they began, which suggests a lasting change from years of training rather than only a temporary state.

Matthieu Ricard, a molecular biologist who became a Buddhist monk and is one of the most EEG-studied people alive, was a co-author of that study.

A 2017 study in PLOS ONE extended the finding. Practitioners of three different meditation traditions all showed higher gamma amplitude than non-meditators, and the more experience a person had, the higher their gamma. The researchers checked that the signal did not come from eye or muscle artifacts.

These are studies of people with years of practice. They show what sustained mental training is associated with, and they do not show that a few sessions will produce the same change.

2. Focused attention

Gamma activity rises when you pay close attention. A review in Trends in Neurosciences brought together studies showing that gamma increases during attention, while information is held in working memory, and when memories are formed. In practical terms, deep, sustained focus on a demanding task is itself a gamma-related state.

3. Neurofeedback training

Neurofeedback shows your brain its own activity in real-time, so it can learn to self-regulate. Several controlled studies have trained gamma directly. In one study at Leiden University, people who trained to increase gamma activity raised it both within and across sessions, and they improved on a test of recollection memory, while a beta-training group improved on a different kind of memory.

The evidence is still developing. In a double-blind study of older adults, both gamma and beta neurofeedback raised brain activity within each session, which shows the aging brain is still trainable, but neither protocol improved scores on the intelligence and memory tests used. The authors discussed several possible reasons and ways to improve the protocols. Taken together, these studies show that gamma activity can be trained, and that how much the change carries over into everyday thinking depends on the protocol and the amount of training.

4. 40 Hz light and sound: early research

You may have seen claims that flickering light or pulsing sound at 40 Hz can boost gamma. This research began with a 2016 study in Nature, in which 40 Hz light flicker in mice increased gamma activity and changed the activity of microglia, the brain's immune and clean-up cells.

Since then, the picture has become more complicated. A 2023 study from a separate lab, using recordings from inside the mouse brain, found that 40 Hz flicker did not engage the brain's own gamma rhythms in deeper regions and did not reproduce the earlier cellular findings. Human studies are small and early.

For now, 40 Hz stimulation is an active research area, and what it does in people is still an open question.

Does gamma change with age?

It does. In an EEG study of 236 healthy adults aged 50 to 88, gamma activity evoked by a visual pattern was weaker in older participants, and its peak frequency was lower. Alpha activity showed no such decline. This is part of why gamma interests researchers who study the aging brain, and why the evidence that gamma can be trained matters.

Where Sens.ai fits

Sens.ai is an at-home system that combines brain stimulation, neurofeedback training and an objective assessment of brain function. Its headset reads and trains from delta to the 3rd harmonic of gamma, 1 Hz to 120 Hz, with high fidelity, using three EEG sensors along the midline of the head. It is lab-grade EEG in a consumer form factor, so the gamma band is part of what the system reads and trains.

Several Sens.ai Training programs include gamma-band neurofeedback alongside beta, and Missions combine them with other bands into a structured protocol. The protocol is fifteen minutes a session, three to five times a week, with impact observed and measured after weeks of use. Each Mission begins and ends with an objective assessment, and you are never assessed on the exercise you practiced.

To understand why the brain can change with training at any age, see our page on neuroplasticity.

Questions people ask

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References

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13. Sens.ai headset specification.