Our brains constantly work to make predictions about what’s going on around us, for instance to ensure that we can attend to and consider the unexpected. A new study examines how this works during consciousness and also breaks down under general anesthesia. The results add evidence for the idea that conscious thought requires synchronized communication—mediated by brain rhythms in specific frequency bands—between basic sensory and higher-order cognitive regions of the brain.
Previously, members of the research team in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT and at Vanderbilt University had described how brain rhythms enable the brain to remain prepared to attend to surprises.
Cognition-oriented brain regions (generally at the front of the brain), use relatively low frequency alpha and beta rhythms to suppress processing by sensory regions (generally toward the back of the brain) of stimuli that have become familiar and mundane in the environment (e.g. your co-worker’s music). When sensory regions detect a surprise (e.g. the office fire alarm), they use faster frequency gamma rhythms to tell the higher regions about it and the higher regions process that at gamma frequencies to decide what to do (e.g. exit the building).
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