New lines of research are revealing that these waves are more complex than previously known. Typically measured by electrodes, they have been identified as basic planar waves: simply structured oscillations in neural activity. Neuroscientists have traditionally interpreted this as a bit like the sound of the brain\u2019s engine revving, little more than a sign that it\u2019s working. However, emerging evidence in humans and animals suggests that traveling waves play a central role in how the brain functions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe work coming out is moving this from \u2018Are they relevant?\u2019 to \u2018This is a major motif of how the cortex processes information,\u2019\u201d said Earl K. Miller<\/a>, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n In a study published in April 2026 in Nature Communications<\/a>, neuroscientists measured traveling waves of neural activity and observed a menagerie: source waves that appear to emanate from one location, sink waves that converge on a spot, and vortexlike spiral waves. The team, which included Joshua Jacobs<\/a> and Anup Das<\/a> from the University of Chicago, found that different behavioral tasks were associated with distinct wave patterns.<\/p>\n Joshua Jacobs and Anup Das were part of a team that observed complex patterns of brain waves using intracranial electrodes.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Joshua Jacobs<\/p>\n Neurons can change connections with their neighbors over time, but this usually happens on the scale of days or months. Behavior, however, needs to adapt in seconds. A significant number of neuroscientists now believe these large-scale wave patterns may help to reorganize the brain in real time to meet the behavioral demands of waking life.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if the traveling wave was just the result of neurons firing, like the sound of the engine, it still tells us something very interesting about the brain based on what the person is doing,\u201d Jacobs said. \u201cIf you see a sound moving in a direction across your engine, it means something in your engine is directionally organized.\u201d<\/p>\n Back and Forth <\/p>\n As far back as the 1920s<\/a>, neuroscientists have been measuring the brain\u2019s oscillating electrical activity<\/a> with electrodes on the surface of the scalp via electroencephalography (EEG). When we pay attention, remember, or sleep, the large-scale frequency of the brain\u2019s electrical activity changes. These various oscillations are commonly known as alpha, beta, gamma, and theta waves, and are measured in hertz.<\/p>\n But recording electrical activity from outside the skull limits the fidelity of the information you can gather. Jacobs\u2019 lab specializes in intracranial brain recordings. People with severe epilepsy may have had electrodes placed inside their brain to help locate the source of their seizures. With roughly 100 electrodes placed in a particular brain region, and with permission from the patient, Jacobs and his team are able to capture high-resolution data \u2014 across both space and time \u2014 as the participants perform various thinking tasks.<\/p>\n Neuroengineer Uma Mohan observed waves traveling across the brain during memory tasks, which could help it switch between functions quickly.<\/p>\n Jacobs and his collaborator Uma Mohan<\/a>, who is now a neuroengineer at the National Institutes of Health, were part of a team that used this technique to observe brain activity during memory tasks. In a study published in Nature Human Behavior<\/a> in 2024, they described waves moving in opposite directions across the brain\u2019s outermost region, the cortex. \u201cThey either go back to front or front to back across the brain,\u201d Jacobs said.<\/p>\n Jacobs said a good way to understand this result is to think of the waves as showing the direction of information propagation. Visual regions are in the back, and the prefrontal cortex, the \u201chigher-level\u201d memory region, is at the front. If you\u2019re paying attention to what you are looking at, signals are traveling backward from receptors in your eyes to the visual cortex, and then forward into the rest of the brain via the wave to form a memory. \u201cThe signature of that is to see waves going from the back of the brain to the front,\u201d Jacobs said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thought that was a way the brain was exploiting this organization to switch between encoding and recall memory functions on a rapid timescale, depending on what you need your brain to be supporting,\u201d Mohan explained.<\/p>\n Shifting Patterns<\/p>\n The 2026 research from Jacobs and Das complicated this picture. It showed that these waves can take on much more diverse shapes, patterns, and ripples, far beyond those created by simple up-and-down and back-to-front movement.<\/p>\n We thought that was a way the brain was exploiting this organization to switch between encoding and recall memory functions on a rapid timescale.<\/p>\n Uma Mohan, National Institutes of Health<\/p>\n In the experiment, the team asked participants to perform two memory tasks. The first was a simple verbal memory exercise, in which they had to recall words they had seen on a screen. The second was a more complex spatial task: They navigated a virtual environment and had to recall the locations of objects they encountered.<\/p>\n With the high-resolution method, Jacobs and Das observed two new classes of waves in awake humans for the first time. One, emanating from an area of the cortex, was a concentric wave, like the ripples from a pebble dropped into a lake, or the reverse, in which waves converged on one region. The other was a rotating spiral wave traveling in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction, like a hurricane or a flushing toilet.<\/p>\n \u201cWe see the rotating wave in the spatial task a little bit more often than the waves we see in the verbal task, which tend to have a simpler structure,\u201d Jacobs said. \u201cThis seems to suggest these rotating waves are better for performing more complex memory behaviors.\u201d<\/p>\n Researchers have been making intracranial recordings in humans for a long time, Jacobs said, but they often only looked at one electrode at a time, or a handful. This gave an impression of simple waves across the whole outer cortex. Jacobs realized that, if you look at groups of electrodes that are separated by the right distances, the structure and directionality of the waves becomes clearer.<\/p>\n Mathematical biologist Bard Ermentrout thinks that simple wave patterns seen in past experiments might have been part of more complex waves.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Bard Ermentrout<\/p>\n Jacobs got in touch with Bard Ermentrout<\/a>, a mathematical biologist at the University of Pittsburgh who had been looking at similar patterns in mice. Ermentrout thinks the simple wave patterns observed in the past might actually have been part of more complex waves. However, until recently, researchers haven\u2019t had access to electrodes placed in the right locations or at the right spatial scale to catch the larger pattern.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe the planar waves are just the outer arms, where you\u2019re missing the eye of the storm,\u201d Ermentrout, a co-author of the April 2026 paper, said. \u201cIn a hurricane you only feel the wind going in one direction. You don\u2019t know that it is spinning unless you\u2019re right there by the eye.\u201d<\/p>\n Because the research only collects data from locations where the patients have had electrodes placed as part of their epilepsy treatment, \u201cwe might be missing how ubiquitous these patterns really are,\u201d Jacobs said.<\/p>\n More Than the Motor <\/p>\n Although there is no consensus yet about what these waves in the brain\u2019s local electric field may be doing, some scientists believe they provide another avenue for the brain to coordinate activity between regions. Miller said that these wave patterns are much more dynamic and flexible than the stable, more architectural connections between neurons. For Miller, it makes sense that the brain would exploit this emergent, biophysical layer of organization<\/a> that shifts and moves on the same timescale as behavior.<\/p>\n \u201cThe architecture of the brain is really important, and the traveling waves tend to follow the anatomy, but they don\u2019t strictly follow it. \u2026 The connectivity is more like the information that\u2019s baked into the brain for long-term storage, and the waves are when that information gets expressed in terms of thought and neural processing,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n The waves might be relevant to a variety of brain functions. Studies have found evidence that they play a role in sensory processing, prediction, and modulating the underlying excitability of neurons, making them more or less likely to fire when called upon.<\/p>\n Zhiwen Ye, a neuroscientist at\u00a0 Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation, and his colleagues observed rotating waves that were mirrored across the left and right hemispheres of mouse brains.<\/p>\n A paper published in Science<\/a> in June 2026 echoes the results found in human epilepsy patients by Jacobs and his team. The neuroscientists Zhiwen Ye<\/a> of Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation and Nicholas Steinmetz<\/a> of the University of Washington also observed circular, rotating waves, but this time in the brains of mice. Fascinatingly, these waves were mirrored and synchronized between the left and right hemispheres. What\u2019s more, in the somatosensory cortex \u2014 where information from the senses is integrated with bodily movements \u2014 axonal neurons were wired together in a spiraling, circular arrangement. That might facilitate the production of these hurricane-like waves.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we found was there is a circuit, a connection of cells to form these waves, to mediate these waves,\u201d Ye said. \u201cIf they are not important, why would the brain try to wire these cells in this way?\u201d<\/p>\n In a review paper published in September 2026 in Neuron<\/a>, lead authors Lyle Muller<\/a> of the University of Texas at Dallas and John Reynolds<\/a> of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies drew on decades of neuroscientific findings to make the case that traveling waves in the visual cortex could help with predicting upcoming sensory information<\/a>. They described how evolving patterns can carry information about what the brain has just experienced alongside what it is experiencing now to help the brain make short-term predictions about what it is likely to experience next.<\/p>\n The waves in the local electric field may play a key role in cognition, Miller said, with the ability to excite or inhibit the underlying neural machinery. He describes neurons in the cortex as \u201cHumpty Dumpty sitting on a wall,\u201d teetering right on the edge of firing. This oscillating electrical activity can alter the voltage gradient at the synapses that connect neurons, making them more or less likely to fire in the future.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Joshua-Jacobs-2-cr-CO-Joshua-Jacobs.webp\")
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