Atwater describes a SAM session as a three-stage process adapted from Charles Tart's 1975 model of altered states. First, certain movement arcs disrupt the listener's ordinary baseline state while others point toward the desired one. In induction, state-specific arcs take over. In stabilization, the arcs are adjusted simply to support the new state, and quieting them can be enough to bring the listener back to ordinary waking awareness. He says SAM can be layered with music, nature sounds, pink or brown sound and spoken guidance. A different theory of how it works Atwater wrote that the Institute does not suppose SAM entrains or drives brainwaves the way the binaural-beat model does, and he called the entrainment explanation a logical fallacy. He pointed instead to the brain's arousal system, to coordination between the hemispheres, and to a hypothesis that the tremolo supports quantum coherence in neuronal microtubules, an idea drawn from Penrose and Hameroff and worded in the article as a supposition. These are the developer's hypotheses; the article reports no measurement of any of them. Where listeners meet it
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Spatial Angle Modulation
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Nancy McMoneagle said in a podcast posted in 2016 that the Institute offered a program based on its spatial angle modulation audio, Event Horizon, designed by Bob Holbrook, and in a livestream posted in 2018 she described SAM as another technology the Institute was now exploring alongside Hemi-Sync. James Lane's own talk, posted in 2018, is titled "SAM-supported mystical experiences at The Monroe Institute." To know whether a particular program or recording uses SAM, check that program's own description. What James Lane's studies found Lane's stated goal was practical: he hoped SAM could calm people in places like patient waiting rooms, so he looked for relaxation effects across three studies. He said they were not really successful in demonstrating powerful effects, though he learned a lot from them. He then turned to the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, an instrument developed to evaluate psychedelic experiences (he used a revised 30-item version), as a better fit for what Institute programs seem to produce, and he framed the larger task as finding ways to demonstrate the benefits of the Institute's programs. The mystical-experience pilot
The pilot took place in an ordinary five-day, six-night Institute program with 14 participants: eight women and six men, ages 51 to 78. The questionnaire was given at the final debriefing. Seven of the 14 scored above 60 percent of the maximum on all four scales (mystical, positive mood, transcendence of time and space, and ineffability), the questionnaire's criterion for a complete mystical experience; two did not, and several came close. Lane cautioned that it was a small study with no experimental controls and that most participants were experienced with Institute programs. How SAM relates to Monroe Sound Science Monroe Sound Science is the Institute's current umbrella name for its sound technology. Its homepage says it uses binaural and multi-layered frequencies, and its Monroe Sound Science page lists Spatial Angle Modulation among its techniques, alongside binaural beats, isochronic tones and frequency modulation. In a conversation posted in 2026, Paul Citarella said the latest generation is built on a fully simulated 3D environment used for entrainment, without naming SAM. In 2012 and 2013 SAM was described as a complement to Hemi-Sync, so it is one named method under the umbrella, not a synonym for it.