Neuroscientists just found a hidden “fingerprint” in human memory
Electrical rhythms that sweep across the brain’s surface don’t just move in straight lines. Recordings from neurosurgical patients show they also form spirals and expanding or contracting rings that shift as people store and recall memories.
Scientists have discovered a hidden, geometric pattern in human memory, revealing previously unknown spatial organization of brain activity during memory formation and recall. Using direct brain recordings from neurosurgical patients, researchers found that traveling waves of neural oscillations, previously thought to move in straight lines, actually organize themselves into swirling spirals, rings, and other intricate shapes that change with the stage of memory and the specific item being viewed.
These patterns, formed by coordinated electrical fluctuations called neural oscillations, allow distant regions of the cerebral cortex, the folded outer layer of neural tissue covering the brain, to communicate flexibly as mental demands shift. By analyzing data from 24 patients with drug-resistant epilepsy, researchers identified spatial patterns of rhythmic activity in both spatial and verbal memory tasks, revealing that traveling waves form distinct geometries corresponding to different memory stages and items.
The study, published in Nature Communications, highlights the importance of investigating large-scale brain activity and its reorganization over time, suggesting that understanding the brain requires looking beyond individual neuron activity and considering how traveling waves propagate across the cortex.
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