Research Hit: Your Brain Rhythms May Be The Key
A new paper suggest that brain waves and brain rhythms are actually key factors in cognition and disruptions predict brain disorders.
The key to what?
To everything!
Everything?! Isn’t our brain driven by brain cells and the chemical transmitters?
Yes, and a lot of what I have reported on these pages also focuses on brain regions and the chemicals that communicate between the regions and cells and the respective networks.
But I have also reported on other features such as the coordination between brain regions, how brain waves flush out toxins, and one that I found fascinating on swirls of activity moving across the brain:
Ok, so brain waves and rhythms are important then but aren’t they the result of the neurons firing together.
Well, yes but it also seems that there is a much stronger interaction than previously assumed - notable in the article on swirling spirals above. Also just about all disorders also have disrupted brain rhythms and waves. This suggests that not only are these rhythms and waves the results of neuronal activity but also they influence neuronal activity and could be key to understanding cognition and brain function.
So we need to understand these rhythms better - hasn’t this been researched?
Well, yes there has been research but this is often a side note such as in brain wave patterns when sleeping. The vast majority of neuroscience research focuses on the micro level - for multiple reasons - for example if you are developing a drug you will want to know how it docks onto various receptors and how this influences neurons and networks - but not large scale brain waves and rhythms.
But this is precisely what Earl Miller and colleagues of the Picower Institute at MIT have just published a paper on: saying that these rhythms could explain a lot more than we have given them credit for.
Oh wow and have they given clues as to how this happens?
They have indeed. They have conducted various pieces of research and it seems like - this sound amazing - that the brain generates slow Beta wave pattern on the cortex and this kind of operates like a stencil within which higher level gamma waves appear. Gamma waves being active in conscious processing or action.
That sounds cool!
Yes, actually pretty amazing - this opens up whole new ways to think of how the brain functions but also how these interact and new therapies potentially also.
So look after you brain waves?
Yes, if only we knew how - good sleep is one way to ensure healthy brain rhythm function though!
Reference
Earl K Miller, Scott L Brincat, Jefferson E Roy.
Cognition is an emergent property.
Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 2024; 57: 101388
DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2024.101388