David Orenstein writes about a new theory from MIT's Picower Institute arguing that cognition and consciousness arise from analog computations performed by traveling brain waves, rather than from the sequential processing of fixed neural circuits.
- Published in *The Journal of Neuroscience* by Earl Miller, Scott Brincat, and Jefferson Roy; the paper is a review synthesizing years of experimental evidence.
- Alpha and beta waves act as "mobile stencils" that spatially and temporally gate which gamma waves can process sensory input, enabling what the authors call "spatiotemporal computing."
- Ephaptic coupling — electric fields directly influencing neural spiking — provides a rapid feedback mechanism by which waves coordinate the very neurons that generate them.
- Anesthesia studies by Miller and Emery Brown show three drugs with different molecular targets all disrupt large-scale wave organization to produce unconsciousness, supporting the claim that consciousness depends on wave integrity rather than specific receptors.
- Miller acknowledges the theory still needs direct evidence of analog computation in brain wave patterns.
- Published in *The Journal of Neuroscience* by Earl Miller, Scott Brincat, and Jefferson Roy; the paper is a review synthesizing years of experimental evidence.
- Alpha and beta waves act as "mobile stencils" that spatially and temporally gate which gamma waves can process sensory input, enabling what the authors call "spatiotemporal computing."
- Ephaptic coupling — electric fields directly influencing neural spiking — provides a rapid feedback mechanism by which waves coordinate the very neurons that generate them.
- Anesthesia studies by Miller and Emery Brown show three drugs with different molecular targets all disrupt large-scale wave organization to produce unconsciousness, supporting the claim that consciousness depends on wave integrity rather than specific receptors.
- Miller acknowledges the theory still needs direct evidence of analog computation in brain wave patterns.
