Traveling waves of electrical activity in the brain may do more than reflect background noise, according to a new framework from Salk Institute neuroscientists reported by ScienceDaily. The researchers say these waves may act as a kind of computational engine in the visual cortex.
John Reynolds, PhD, who first identified traveling brain waves in awake animals in 2020, and his colleagues found that the waves were linked to whether an animal successfully detected an object. That work helped raise a bigger question about why the brain produces these waves in the first place.
In the new proposal, the team suggests the waves help the brain build internal representations of the outside world. The visual cortex may use them to shape perception from moment to moment, convert recent sensory input into an internal model, make short-term predictions, and preserve patterns tied to memories of events that unfold over time.
The researchers say those functions may help explain how the brain turns complex, changing sensory information into coherent perception and behavior. Other authors of the study included researchers from UT Dallas, the Fields Institute, Western University and the University of Utah.
