Understanding Cognition Through Brain Spirals

Tuesday - September 19 2023, 19:54 UTC - 1 year ago

The team from the University of Sydney analyzed 100 brain scans from the Human Connectome Project and found a mysterious spiraling wave activity pattern in the brain while at rest and when performing challenging cognitive tasks. By analyzing these spiral wave fingerprints, they could classify different stages of cognitive processing. This could be a step towards understanding the incredible engineering of our biological computing engines.

Recently I perched on the edge of a cliff at Asuable Chasm, staring at the whitewater over 100 feet below. Water rushed through sandstone cliffs before hitting a natural break and twirling back onto itself, forming multiple hypnotic swirls. Over millennia, these waters have carved the magnificent stone walls lining the chasm, supporting a vibrant ecosystem.

The brain may do the same for cognition. We know that different brain regions constantly coordinate their activity patterns, resulting in waves that ripple across the brain. Different types of waves correspond to differing mental and cognitive states.

That’s one idea for how the brain organizes itself to support our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. But if the brain’s information processing dynamics are like waves, what happens when there’s turbulence? .

In fact, the brain does experience the equivalent of neural "hurricanes." They bump into one another, and when they do, the resulting computations correlate with cognition.

These findings come from a unique study in Nature Human Behavior that bridges neuroscience and fluid dynamics to unpack the inner workings of the human mind. The team analyzed 100 brain scans collected from the Human Connectome Project using methods usually reserved for observing water flow patterns in physics. The unconventional marriage of fields paid off: they found a mysterious, spiraling wave activity pattern in the brain while at rest and during challenging mental tasks.

The brain spirals often grew from select regions that bridge adjacent local neural networks. Eventually, they propagate across the cortex—the wrinkly, outermost region of the brain. Often called the "seat of intelligence," the cortex is a multitasker. Dedicated regions process our senses. Others interweave new experiences with memories and emotions, and in turn, form the decisions that help us adapt to an ever-changing world.

For the cortex to properly function, communication between each region is key. In a series of tests, brain spirals seem to be the messenger, organizing local neural networks across the cortex into a coherent computing processor. They’re also dedicated to a particular cognitive task. For example, when someone was listening to a story—as compared to solving math problems—the vortices began in different brain regions and created their own spin patterns, a cognitive fingerprint of sorts.

By analyzing these spiral wave fingerprints, the team found they could classify different stages of cognitive processing using brain images alone.

Finding turbulence in the brain is another step towards understanding how our biological computer works and could inspire the creation of future brain-based machines.

"By unraveling the mysteries of brain activity and uncovering the mechanisms governing its coordination, we are moving closer to unlocking the full potential of understanding cognition and brain function," said study author Dr. Pulin Gong at the University of Sydney.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? .

A fundamental mystery of the brain is how electrical sparkles in neurons translate into thoughts, reasoning, memories, and even consciousness.

To unravel it requires us to understand how the brain processes information. That’s where brain spirals come in. The findings from this unique brain-meets-physics study could be a step towards understanding the incredible engineering of our stunningly fast biological computing engines.