Interacting Brain Waves Key to How We Process Information, Salk Study Suggests

For years, the brain has been thought of as a biological computer that processes information through traditional circuits, whereby data zips straight from one cell to another. While that model is still accurate, a new study led by Salk Institute Professor Thomas Albright, PhD, and Staff Scientist Sergei Gepshtein, PhD, shows that there’s also a second, very different way that the brain parses information: i.e., through the interactions of waves of neural activity. The findings, published in Science Advances on April 22, 2022, help researchers better understand how the brain processes information. The open-access article is titled “Spatially Distributed Computation in Cortical Circuits.”