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If you keep a close eye on an MRI scan of the brain, you’ll see a wave pass through the entire brain like a heartbeat once every few seconds. This ultra-slow rhythm was recognized decades ago, but no one quite knew what to make of it. MRI data are inherently noisy, so most researchers simply ignored the ultra-slow waves.
But by studying electrical activity in mouse brains, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that the ultra-slow waves are anything but noise. They are more like waves in the sea, with everything the brain does taking place in boats upon that sea. Research to date has been focused on the goings-on inside the boats, without much thought for the sea itself. But the new information suggests that the waves play a central role in how the complex brain coordinates itself and that the waves are directly linked to consciousness.
“Your brain has 100 billion neurons or so, and they have to be coordinated,” said senior author Marcus Raichle, MD, the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor of Medicine and a professor of radiology at Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at the School of Medicine. “These slowly varying signals in the brain are a way to get a very large-scale coordination of the activities in all the diverse areas of the brain. When the wave goes up, areas become more excitable; when it goes down, they become less so.”
Via Miloš Bajčetić
