Daily Brain Snack: Your Brain's Hidden Rhythms for High Performance
Coordination of brain waves int he frontal brain predicts performance on flexible attention tasks
What sort of Rhythms are you talking about - I thought the brain cycled through multiple ups and downs?
Yes, we know the brain has brain waves and we cycle through different phases depending on activity, but more recently research has thrown up some surprises such as how we have swirling spirals move across the brain:
But this research by Anna-Lena Schuber and colleagues of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, analysed activity during flexible cognitive tasks. Precisely the sort of things that you may engage in at the workplace while trying to focus or shift attention while ignoring outside stimuli.
What did they find?
They found an interesting rhythm and coordination of rhythms and this predicted performance on these flexible attention tasks i.e. focusing on one aspect and then changing the focus to another aspect.
Specifically they saw that theta rhythms in the mid-prefrontal region of the brain oscillate between 4 and 8 hertz and the more coordinated this was the better participants performed.
"Specific signals in the midfrontal brain region are better synchronized in people with higher cognitive ability - especially during demanding phases of reasoning,"
Isn’t that a slow rhythm?
Yes, well noticed, it is. We actually would probably expect some of the faster brain waves to be present or more aligned or coordinated with intense cognitive activity such as gamma frequencies - but this was not the case.
Why not?
Good question - it shows that the brain uses multiple frequencies and that these can all be beneficial in different contexts. Here slow brain waves coordinating in frontal regions helps performance on attention and changing attention. I’m not sure how to change these outside of practice and staying calm!
But it could lead to electrical interventions which already exist by stimulating the right brain regions and activity patterns.
But for now I’ll just hope my theta waves are coordinating!
Reference
Anna-Lena Schubert, Christoph Löffler, Henrike M. Jungeblut, Mareike J. Hülsemann
Trait characteristics of midfrontal theta connectivity as a neurocognitive measure of cognitive control and its relation to general cognitive abilities
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2025
DOI: 10.1037/xge0001780