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Brain states as wave-like motifs
Maya Foster1, Dustin Scheinost2
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
|April 6, 2024
Summary
Brain activity can be viewed as recurring, sequential waves. This wave perspective offers a unified framework for understanding brain states across different scales and time.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Complex Systems
Background:
- Growing evidence supports wave-like activity in the brain across various scales.
- Current understanding often focuses on localized activity rather than holistic patterns.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose and explore a unified framework viewing brain states as propagating waves.
- To emphasize the sequential and periodic nature of brain activity.
Main Methods:
- Review and synthesis of existing experimental work on brain wave-like properties.
- Development of a scale-agnostic framework for analyzing brain activity as waves.
Main Results:
- Brain states can be effectively modeled as recurring, sequential patterns of propagating neural activity (waves).
- A scale-agnostic approach allows for consistent analysis across different spatio-temporal resolutions.
Conclusions:
- Adopting a wave perspective provides a powerful lens for understanding brain dynamics.
- This framework opens new avenues for experimental investigation and theoretical development in neuroscience.
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