Because these spindles change with aging, understanding these wave patterns better could provide insights into how plasticity breaks down with disease, Muller said. Muller and his colleagues found that rotating wave patterns called spindles that occur during non-REM sleep – when our brains, breathing and heart rate slow – could enable plasticity required for storing memories during sleep. This critical function deteriorates during neurodegenerative diseases. Lyle Muller, assistant professor of applied mathematics at the University of Western Ontario, leads a lab that has been exploring the links between traveling waves during sleep and neural plasticity – the process through which the brain learns and integrates new memories. The scientists behind this recent paper are not alone in their study of brain waves. Understanding these wave patterns better could provide insights into how plasticity breaks down with disease. In future work, the authors plan to integrate experimental recordings with modeling studies to better understand the mechanisms underlying the brain spirals and delve deeper into their functional roles in cognition. This large-scale approach to neuroscience could uncover various mechanisms underlying disorders of the nervous system, and potentially even lead to new diagnostic tests, the authors say. In our research we observed that these interacting brain spirals allow for flexible reconfiguration of brain activity during various tasks involving natural language processing and working memory, which they achieve by changing their rotational directions." "Through their rotational motion, they effectively coordinate the flow of activity between these networks. student and lead author Yiben Xu said in a statement. "One key characteristic of these brain spirals is that they often emerge at the boundaries that separate different functional networks in the brain," Ph.D. This large-scale approach to neuroscience could uncover various mechanisms underlying disorders of the nervous system. Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist. The spiral waves are brain signals emerging from the collective activities of millions – potentially even billions – of neurons at the microscopic level. The HCP is an open science project containing brain scans from hundreds of participants, who are monitored either while sitting quietly in the scanner in a resting state or performing one of several simple tasks. What has been used to, for example, create more efficient piping systems, is now helping scientists understand the brain better. The team analyzed the imaging data collected as part of the Human Connectome Project (HCP) using methods employed by fluid physicists studying wave patterns in turbulent flows. Participants engaged in cognitive tasks, such as solving math problems, leading to a fascinating observation: the waves exhibited a mesmerizing interplay of clockwise and counterclockwise rotations across diverse brain regions, frequently converging at the intersections of distinct brain networks. The scientists took magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans of 100 young adults between the ages 22 and 35. "These emergent waves enable us to understand how different brain regions or networks are effectively coordinated during cognitive processing." "These emergent waves enable us to understand how different brain regions or networks are effectively coordinated during cognitive processing," senior author and University of Sydney Associate Professor Pulin Gong told Salon. The waves exhibited a mesmerizing interplay of clockwise and counterclockwise rotations across diverse brain regions, frequently converging at the intersections of distinct brain networks.
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