Neuroscientists Find Surprisingly Complex Spiral Vortex Waves Traveling Across the Cortex
JosephJacks_ · x · 2026-10-01
Quanta Magazine reports that neuroscientists have measured a surprising menagerie of traveling brain waves, including spiraling vortices, far more complex than the planar waves long assumed.
The brain spends about half its energy maintaining electrochemical gradients that keep neurons poised to fire, and the collective activity of many neurons propagates across regions as waves. Once treated as mere background hum, these traveling waves are now shown—in both humans and animals—to play a central role in reorganizing cortical activity in real time, offering new clues to memory, decision-making, and perception.
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