Surprisingly Complex Waves Reveal the Brain’s Inner Workings

I get out of bed.

我起床了。

I walk through the dimly lit hallway, thinking of what’s in my fridge and what I should have for breakfast.

我穿过昏暗的走廊，想着冰箱里有什么以及早餐应该吃什么。

With no real effort, I’ve navigated my environment, accessed my memory, and assessed the energetic state of my body, all in the space of a few seconds.

我不需要付出任何努力，就可以在几秒钟内浏览我的环境、访问我的记忆并评估我身体的能量状态。

How is the brain able to do this?

大脑是如何做到这一点的呢？

Partly by harnessing electricity.

部分通过利用电力。

The brain spends about half of its energetic resources maintaining the electrochemical gradients that keep neurons poised and ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

大脑花费大约一半的能量资源来维持电化学梯度，使神经元保持平衡并准备好随时放电。

This gives the brain an extraordinary level of flexibility in responding to the demands of everyday life.

这使大脑在应对日常生活需求方面具有非凡的灵活性。

The collective electrical activity of many neurons can be seen as waves propagating through the brain from one region to the next, like the raised arms of enthusiastic spectators at a football game.

许多神经元的集体电活动可以被视为通过大脑从一个区域传播到下一个区域的电波，就像足球比赛中热情的观众举起的手臂一样。

New lines of research are revealing that these waves are more complex than previously known.

新的研究表明这些波比之前已知的更加复杂。

Typically measured by electrodes, they have been identified as basic planar waves: simply structured oscillations in neural activity.

通常通过电极测量，它们被认为是基本的平面波：神经活动中简单结构的振荡。

Neuroscientists have traditionally interpreted this as a bit like the sound of the brain’s engine revving, little more than a sign that it’s working.

神经科学家传统上将其解释为有点像大脑引擎运转的声音，只不过是它正在工作的迹象。

However, emerging evidence in humans and animals suggests that traveling waves play a central role in how the brain functions.

然而，人类和动物身上的新证据表明，行波在大脑功能中发挥着核心作用。

“The work coming out is moving this from ‘Are they relevant?’ to ‘This is a major motif of how the cortex processes information,’” said Earl K.

“即将到来的工作正在将这个问题从‘它们相关吗？’转变为‘这是皮层如何处理信息的主要主题’，”Earl K.

Miller , a cognitive neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

米勒，麻省理工学院认知神经科学家。

In a study published in April 2026 in Nature Communications , 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.

在《自然通讯》2026 年 4 月发表的一项研究中，神经科学家测量了神经活动的行波，并观察到了一个动物园：似乎从一个位置发出的源波、汇聚在一个点上的沉波以及漩涡状的螺旋波。

The team, which included Joshua Jacobs and Anup Das from the University of Chicago, found that different behavioral tasks were associated with distinct wave patterns.

该团队包括芝加哥大学的约书亚·雅各布斯和阿努普·达斯，他们发现不同的行为任务与不同的波浪模式相关。

Joshua Jacobs and Anup Das were part of a team that observed complex patterns of brain waves using intracranial electrodes.

Joshua Jacobs 和 Anup Das 所在的团队使用颅内电极观察复杂的脑电波模式。

Neurons can change connections with their neighbors over time, but this usually happens on the scale of days or months.

随着时间的推移，神经元可以改变与邻居的连接，但这通常会在几天或几个月的时间内发生。

Behavior, however, needs to adapt in seconds.

然而，行为需要在几秒钟内适应。

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.

现在，大量神经科学家相信这些大规模的波模式可能有助于实时重组大脑，以满足清醒生活的行为需求。

“Even 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,” Jacobs said.

雅各布斯说：“即使行波只是神经元放电的结果，就像发动机的声音一样，它仍然可以根据人正在做的事情告诉我们一些关于大脑的非常有趣的事情。”

“If you see a sound moving in a direction across your engine, it means something in your engine is directionally organized.”

“如果你看到声音沿着引擎的方向移动，则意味着引擎中的某些东西是有方向组织的。”

As far back as the 1920s , neuroscientists have been measuring the brain’s oscillating electrical activity with electrodes on the surface of the scalp via electroencephalography (EEG).

早在 20 世纪 20 年代，神经科学家就一直在通过脑电图 (EEG) 使用头皮表面的电极来测量大脑的振荡电活动。

When we pay attention, remember, or sleep, the large-scale frequency of the brain’s electrical activity changes.

当我们集中注意力、记忆力或睡眠时，大脑电活动的频率会发生大规模变化。

These various oscillations are commonly known as alpha, beta, gamma, and theta waves, and are measured in hertz.

这些不同的振荡通常称为 α、β、γ 和 θ 波，以赫兹为单位测量。

But recording electrical activity from outside the skull limits the fidelity of the information you can gather.

但是从头骨外部记录电活动限制了您可以收集的信息的保真度。

Jacobs’ lab specializes in intracranial brain recordings.

雅各布斯的实验室专门研究颅内脑记录。

People with severe epilepsy may have had electrodes placed inside their brain to help locate the source of their seizures.

患有严重癫痫症的人可能在大脑内放置了电极，以帮助找到癫痫发作的根源。

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 — across both space and time — as the participants perform various thinking tasks.

在获得患者许可的情况下，雅各布斯和他的团队将大约 100 个电极放置在特定的大脑区域，当参与者执行各种思维任务时，他们能够跨空间和时间捕获高分辨率数据。

Neuroengineer Uma Mohan observed waves traveling across the brain during memory tasks, which could help it switch between functions quickly.

神经工程师乌玛·莫汉（Uma Mohan）观察到记忆任务期间大脑中传播的电波，这可以帮助大脑在功能之间快速切换。

Jacobs and his collaborator Uma Mohan , 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.

雅各布斯和他的合作者乌玛·莫汉（Uma Mohan）现在是美国国立卫生研究院的神经工程师，他们所在的团队使用这种技术来观察记忆任务期间的大脑活动。

In a study published in Nature Human Behavior in 2024, they described waves moving in opposite directions across the brain’s outermost region, the cortex.

在 2024 年《自然人类行为》杂志上发表的一项研究中，他们描述了大脑最外层区域（皮层）沿相反方向移动的波。

“They either go back to front or front to back across the brain,” Jacobs said.

“它们要么从后到前，要么从前到后穿过大脑，”雅各布斯说。

Jacobs said a good way to understand this result is to think of the waves as showing the direction of information propagation.

雅各布斯说，理解这一结果的一个好方法是将波视为显示信息传播的方向。

Visual regions are in the back, and the prefrontal cortex, the “higher-level” memory region, is at the front.

视觉区域位于后面，前额皮质（“高级”记忆区域）位于前面。

If you’re 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.

如果你正在注意你所看到的东西，信号就会从你眼睛里的受体向后传播到视觉皮层，然后通过电波向前传播到大脑的其他部分，形成记忆。

“The signature of that is to see waves going from the back of the brain to the front,” Jacobs said.

“其特征是看到电波从大脑后部传到前部，”雅各布斯说。

“We 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,” Mohan explained.

“我们认为这是大脑利用这个组织在编码和回忆记忆功能之间快速切换的一种方式，具体取决于你需要大脑支持什么，”莫汉解释道。

The 2026 research from Jacobs and Das complicated this picture.

Jacobs 和 Das 的 2026 年研究使情况变得更加复杂。

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.

它表明，这些波浪可以呈现出更加多样化的形状、图案和涟漪，远远超出简单的上下和从后到前运动所产生的效果。

We thought that was a way the brain was exploiting this organization to switch between encoding and recall memory functions on a rapid timescale.

我们认为这是大脑利用这个组织在编码和回忆记忆功能之间快速切换的一种方式。

Uma Mohan, National Institutes of Health

乌玛·莫汉，美国国立卫生研究院

In the experiment, the team asked participants to perform two memory tasks.

在实验中，研究小组要求参与者执行两项记忆任务。

The first was a simple verbal memory exercise, in which they had to recall words they had seen on a screen.

第一个是简单的言语记忆练习，他们必须回忆在屏幕上看到的单词。

The second was a more complex spatial task: They navigated a virtual environment and had to recall the locations of objects they encountered.

第二个是更复杂的空间任务：他们在虚拟环境中导航并必须回忆他们遇到的物体的位置。

With the high-resolution method, Jacobs and Das observed two new classes of waves in awake humans for the first time.

利用高分辨率方法，雅各布斯和达斯首次在清醒的人类身上观察到了两种新的波。

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.

其中一种是从大脑皮层的某个区域发出的，是同心波，就像一颗卵石落入湖中产生的涟漪，或者相反，波会聚在一个区域。

The other was a rotating spiral wave traveling in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction, like a hurricane or a flushing toilet.

另一种是顺时针或逆时针方向传播的旋转螺旋波，就像飓风或冲水马桶。

“We 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,” Jacobs said.

雅各布斯说：“我们在空间任务中看到的旋转波比我们在言语任务中看到的波更频繁，后者往往具有更简单的结构。”

“This seems to suggest these rotating waves are better for performing more complex memory behaviors.”

“这似乎表明这些旋转波更适合执行更复杂的记忆行为。”

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.

雅各布斯说，研究人员长期以来一直在人类身上进行颅内记录，但他们通常一次只观察一个电极或几个电极。

This gave an impression of simple waves across the whole outer cortex.

这给人一种横跨整个外皮层的简单波的印象。

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.

雅各布斯意识到，如果你观察以正确距离分隔的电极组，波的结构和方向性就会变得更加清晰。

Mathematical biologist Bard Ermentrout thinks that simple wave patterns seen in past experiments might have been part of more complex waves.

数学生物学家巴德·埃门特鲁特认为，过去实验中看到的简单波模式可能是更复杂波的一部分。

Jacobs got in touch with Bard Ermentrout , a mathematical biologist at the University of Pittsburgh who had been looking at similar patterns in mice.

雅各布斯联系了匹兹堡大学的数学生物学家巴德·埃门特劳特（Bard Ermentrout），他一直在研究老鼠的类似模式。

Ermentrout thinks the simple wave patterns observed in the past might actually have been part of more complex waves.

埃尔门特劳特认为，过去观察到的简单波浪模式实际上可能是更复杂波浪的一部分。

However, until recently, researchers haven’t had access to electrodes placed in the right locations or at the right spatial scale to catch the larger pattern.

然而，直到最近，研究人员还无法将电极放置在正确的位置或正确的空间尺度来捕获更大的图案。

“Maybe the planar waves are just the outer arms, where you’re missing the eye of the storm,” Ermentrout, a co-author of the April 2026 paper, said.

“也许平面波只是外臂，你错过了风暴眼，”2026 年 4 月论文的合著者埃尔门特劳特说。

“In a hurricane you only feel the wind going in one direction.

“在飓风中，你只能感觉到风朝一个方向吹。

You don’t know that it is spinning unless you’re right there by the eye.”

除非你亲眼所见，否则你不会知道它正在旋转。”

Because the research only collects data from locations where the patients have had electrodes placed as part of their epilepsy treatment, “we might be missing how ubiquitous these patterns really are,” Jacobs said.

由于该研究仅从患者在癫痫治疗中放置电极的位置收集数据，“我们可能会忽略这些模式实际上是多么普遍，”雅各布斯说。

Although there is no consensus yet about what these waves in the brain’s local electric field may be doing, some scientists believe they provide another avenue for the brain to coordinate activity between regions.

尽管对于大脑局部电场中的这些波可能发挥的作用尚未达成共识，但一些科学家认为它们为大脑协调区域之间的活动提供了另一种途径。

Miller said that these wave patterns are much more dynamic and flexible than the stable, more architectural connections between neurons.

米勒说，这些波模式比神经元之间稳定的、更具结构性的连接更具动态性和灵活性。

For Miller, it makes sense that the brain would exploit this emergent, biophysical layer of organization that shifts and moves on the same timescale as behavior.

对于米勒来说，大脑会利用这种新兴的生物物理组织层，它与行为在同一时间尺度上变化和移动，这是有道理的。

“The architecture of the brain is really important, and the traveling waves tend to follow the anatomy, but they don’t strictly follow it.

“大脑的结构非常重要，行波往往遵循解剖结构，但并不严格遵循它。

…

……

The connectivity is more like the information that’s baked into the brain for long-term storage, and the waves are when that information gets expressed in terms of thought and neural processing,” Miller said.

连接性更像是被植入大脑以长期存储的信息，而波则是这些信息以思维和神经处理的方式表达的时候，”米勒说。

The waves might be relevant to a variety of brain functions.

这些波可能与多种大脑功能有关。

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.

研究发现，有证据表明它们在感觉处理、预测和调节神经元的潜在兴奋性方面发挥着作用，使它们在受到召唤时或多或少可能会放电。

Zhiwen Ye, a neuroscientist at 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.

深圳医学研究与翻译研究院的神经科学家叶志文和他的同事观察到了镜像在小鼠大脑左右半球上的旋转波。

A paper published in Science in June 2026 echoes the results found in human epilepsy patients by Jacobs and his team.

2026 年 6 月在《科学》杂志上发表的一篇论文呼应了 Jacobs 和他的团队在人类癫痫患者中发现的结果。

The neuroscientists Zhiwen Ye of Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation and Nicholas Steinmetz of the University of Washington also observed circular, rotating waves, but this time in the brains of mice.

深圳医学研究院的神经科学家叶志文和华盛顿大学的尼古拉斯·斯坦梅茨也观察到了圆形的旋转波，但这次是在老鼠的大脑中。

Fascinatingly, these waves were mirrored and synchronized between the left and right hemispheres.

令人着迷的是，这些波在左右半球之间镜像并同步。

What’s more, in the somatosensory cortex — where information from the senses is integrated with bodily movements — axonal neurons were wired together in a spiraling, circular arrangement.

更重要的是，在体感皮层（来自感官的信息与身体运动相结合）中，轴突神经元以螺旋状的圆形排列连接在一起。

That might facilitate the production of these hurricane-like waves.

这可能会促进这些飓风般的波浪的产生。

“What we found was there is a circuit, a connection of cells to form these waves, to mediate these waves,” Ye said.

“我们发现存在一个电路，一个细胞的连接来形成这些波，来介导这些波，”叶说。

“If they are not important, why would the brain try to wire these cells in this way?”

“如果它们不重要，为什么大脑会尝试以这种方式连接这些细胞？”

In a review paper published in September 2026 in Neuron , lead authors Lyle Muller of the University of Texas at Dallas and John Reynolds 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 .

在 2026 年 9 月《Neuron》杂志上发表的一篇评论论文中，主要作者德克萨斯大学达拉斯分校的莱尔·穆勒 (Lyle Muller) 和索尔克生物研究所的约翰·雷诺兹 (John Reynolds) 借鉴了数十年的神经科学研究结果，证明视觉皮层中的行波可以帮助预测即将到来的感官信息。

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.

他们描述了进化模式如何携带大脑刚刚经历过的信息以及现在正在经历的信息，以帮助大脑对接下来可能经历的事情做出短期预测。

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.

米勒说，局部电场中的波可能在认知中发挥关键作用，具有激发或抑制潜在神经机制的能力。

He describes neurons in the cortex as “Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall,” teetering right on the edge of firing.

他将皮层中的神经元描述为“坐在墙上的矮胖子”，在放电的边缘摇摇欲坠。

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.

这种振荡的电活动可以改变连接神经元的突触的电压梯度，使它们将来更有可能放电。

Not everyone buys the hypothesis that traveling waves in the local electric field play a role in how the brain processes information.

并非所有人都相信局部电场中的行波在大脑处理信息中发挥作用的假设。

For György Buzsáki , a systems neuroscientist at New York University, waves are merely a reflection of what’s going on underneath, at the synaptic level.

对于纽约大学的系统神经科学家 György Buzsáki 来说，波仅仅是突触层面上正在发生的事情的反映。

The more neurons you have, and the more synchronous they are, the stronger the electrical field and the oscillations in it will be.

神经元越多，它们越同步，电场及其振荡就越强。

The patterns can tell us interesting things about the circuitry underneath, but that’s about it, according to Buzsáki.

Buzsáki 表示，这些图案可以告诉我们有关底层电路的有趣信息，但仅此而已。

“The current that is being generated is done by synapses,” he said.

“产生的电流是由突触产生的，”他说。

“When current goes into the neuron, they do their computation and generate their action potentials and communicate with each other.

“当电流进入神经元时，它们会进行计算并产生动作电位并相互通信。

You don’t need anything happening in the extracellular space.”

你不需要细胞外空间发生任何事情。”

Although the true nature of what, if anything, these waves are doing is not fully settled, evidence is mounting that they may be important to how the brain organizes, processes, and expresses information in real time.

尽管这些波的真正性质（如果有的话）尚未完全确定，但越来越多的证据表明它们可能对大脑如何实时组织、处理和表达信息很重要。

“Biology exploits regularity and predictability, and these waves are doing organized, predictable things in association with cognitive functions,” Miller said.

“生物学利用规律性和可预测性，这些波正在做与认知功能相关的有组织的、可预测的事情，”米勒说。

“If that doesn’t tell you something is going on, I don’t know what does.”

“如果这还不能告诉你发生了什么事，我不知道什么可以告诉你。”

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辱骂、亵渎、自我推销、误导、语无伦次或偏离主题的评论将被拒绝。

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