内容来源：https://www.quantamagazine.org/surprisingly-complex-waves-reveal-the-brains-inner-workings-20260930/

内容总结：

清晨，我从床上起身，穿过昏暗的走廊，一边盘算着冰箱里还有什么、早餐该吃什么。短短几秒间，我已完成了对环境的导航、对记忆的调用以及对身体能量状态的评估。大脑是如何做到的？答案部分在于电活动。大脑约有一半的能量用于维持神经元的电化学梯度，使其随时处于待命状态。众多神经元的集体电活动表现为穿越脑区的波，犹如足球场上观众此起彼伏的人浪。

长期以来，神经科学家通过电极将这些波测定为简单的基础平面波，并将其视为大脑“引擎轰鸣”般的运转信号。然而，新兴研究表明，这些行波远比此前已知的更为复杂，且在大脑功能中扮演核心角色。麻省理工学院认知神经科学家厄尔·米勒指出，相关研究正将这些波从“是否重要”的讨论推向“皮层信息处理的主要模式”这一认知。

在2026年4月发表于《自然·通讯》的一项研究中，包括芝加哥大学约书亚·雅各布斯和安努普·达斯在内的团队测量了神经活动的行波，观察到多种形态：从一个位置向外扩散的源波、向某一点汇聚的汇波，以及漩涡状的螺旋波。研究发现，不同的行为任务对应着不同的波模式。雅各布斯表示，即使行波只是神经元放电的结果，它仍能根据人的行为揭示大脑中具有方向性组织的信息。

早在20世纪20年代，神经科学家就开始通过脑电图测量大脑的电振荡活动。但从头骨外记录限制了信息的保真度。雅各布斯的实验室专攻颅内脑记录，利用癫痫患者植入的约百个电极，在受试者执行各种思维任务时捕获高分辨率的时空数据。2024年发表于《自然·人类行为》的研究描述了在皮层上方向相反的波：要么从后向前，要么从前向后。雅各布斯解释说，视觉区域在后，前额叶皮层在前，当人专注于所看之物时，信号从眼睛的感受器传向视觉皮层，再向前传递以形成记忆，其标志就是波从脑后部传向脑前部。

2026年的研究进一步复杂化了这一图景，首次在清醒人类中观察到两类新波：一类是从皮层某区域发出的同心波，如同投石入湖产生的涟漪，或其反向汇聚；另一类是顺时针或逆时针旋转的螺旋波，如同飓风或冲水马桶中的水流。雅各布斯指出，旋转波在空间任务中出现得更频繁，而语言任务中的波结构更简单，这似乎表明旋转波更适于执行复杂的记忆行为。

雅各布斯与匹兹堡大学数学生物学家巴德·埃尔门特劳特合作，后者此前在小鼠中观察过类似模式。埃尔门特劳特认为，过去观察到的简单平面波可能只是更复杂波的一部分，“也许平面波只是外围的手臂，你错过了风暴之眼”。由于研究仅从癫痫患者电极植入位置采集数据，雅各布斯表示，这些模式可能比实际所见更为普遍。

尽管科学界尚未就这些波的功能达成共识，但一些科学家认为它们为大脑提供了协调区域间活动的另一途径。米勒认为，这些波模式比神经元之间稳定的架构连接更具动态性和灵活性，大脑利用这一涌现的生物物理组织层，以与行为相同的时间尺度进行转变和移动。米勒表示，大脑架构非常重要，行波倾向于遵循解剖结构，但并非严格遵循；连接性更像是长期存储的信息，而波则是这些信息在思维和神经处理中得到表达的时刻。

这些波可能与多种脑功能相关。研究发现，它们参与感觉处理、预测以及调节神经元的基础兴奋性。2026年6月发表于《科学》的一篇论文呼应了雅各布斯团队在人类癫痫患者中的发现。深圳医学科学院与转化研究院的叶志文和华盛顿大学的尼古拉斯·斯坦梅茨在小鼠大脑中也观察到了圆形旋转波，且这些波在左右半球之间镜像同步。更引人注目的是，在体感皮层中，轴突神经元以螺旋环状排列，可能促进了这些飓风状波的产生。叶志文说：“我们发现存在一个回路，细胞连接形成这些波、介导这些波。如果不重要，大脑为什么要以这种方式连接这些细胞？”

在2026年9月发表于《神经元》的综述论文中，德克萨斯大学达拉斯分校的莱尔·穆勒和索尔克生物研究所的约翰·雷诺兹基于数十年神经科学发现提出，视觉皮层中的行波有助于预测即将到来的感觉信息。他们描述了演化中的模式如何携带大脑刚经历过的信息和当前正在经历的信息，帮助大脑对接下来可能经历的内容做出短期预测。米勒认为，局部电场中的波可能通过兴奋或抑制底层神经机制在认知中发挥关键作用。他将皮层神经元比作“坐在墙上的矮胖子”，摇摇欲坠地处于放电边缘，而振荡的电活动可以改变突触的电压梯度，影响神经元未来放电的可能性。

并非所有人都认同局部电场中的行波参与大脑信息处理的假说。纽约大学系统神经科学家焦尔吉·布扎基认为，波仅仅是突触层面底层活动的反映。神经元越多、越同步，电场和振荡就越强。这些模式能告诉我们底层回路的有趣信息，但仅此而已。他说：“电流由突触产生。当电流进入神经元，它们进行计算、产生动作电位并相互交流。你不需要细胞外空间发生任何事情。”

尽管这些波的真实本质尚无定论，但越来越多的证据表明，它们可能对大脑实时组织、处理和表达信息至关重要。米勒说：“生物学会利用规律性和可预测性，这些波与认知功能相关联，做着有组织、可预测的事情。如果这都不能说明有事发生，我不知道还有什么能说明。”

中文翻译：

令人惊讶的复杂脑波揭示了大脑的内部运作机制

引言

我起了床，走过灯光昏暗的走廊，一边想着冰箱里有什么，一边琢磨早餐该吃什么。毫不费力地，我就完成了对周围环境的导航、对记忆的调取，以及对身体能量状态的评估——这一切都发生在短短几秒钟之内。大脑是如何做到这些的？

部分靠的是对电力的运用。大脑将大约一半的能量资源用于维持电化学梯度，使神经元保持待命状态，随时准备在瞬间放电。这赋予大脑非凡的灵活性，足以应对日常生活的各种需求。大量神经元的集体电活动可以看作是脑波在脑中从一个区域传播到下一个区域，就像足球场上热情球迷此起彼伏举起的手臂。

新的研究方向正在揭示，这些脑波比此前所知的更为复杂。它们通常通过电极来测量，一直被认为属于基本的平面波：神经活动中结构简单的振荡。神经科学家传统上将之解释为有点像大脑引擎发出的轰鸣声，不过是大脑正在运转的一个信号而已。然而，来自人类和动物的新证据表明，行波在大脑如何运作中扮演着核心角色。

“新涌现的研究正在把这个问题从‘它们是否相关？’推进到‘这是皮层处理信息的一个主要模式。’”麻省理工学院认知神经科学家厄尔·K·米勒表示。

在2026年4月发表于《自然·通讯》的一项研究中，神经科学家测量了神经活动的行波，观察到了一个“万花筒”：似乎从某一位置向外发出的源波、向某一点汇聚的汇波，以及漩涡般的螺旋波。该团队包括芝加哥大学的约书亚·雅各布斯和阿努普·达斯，他们发现不同的行为任务与不同的波形模式相关联。

约书亚·雅各布斯供图

神经元可以随着时间推移改变与邻近神经元的连接，但这通常发生在数天或数月的尺度上。然而，行为需要在数秒内做出适应。相当多的神经科学家现在相信，这些大规模波形模式可能有助于大脑实时重组，以满足清醒生活中行为的需求。

“即使行波只是神经元放电的结果，就像引擎的声音一样，它仍然能根据一个人正在做什么，告诉我们关于大脑的非常有趣的信息，”雅各布斯说。“如果你看到声音在你的引擎中沿某个方向移动，这意味着你的引擎中有某种东西是有方向性组织的。”

来回往复

早在20世纪20年代，神经科学家就已经通过脑电图（EEG）在头皮表面用电极测量大脑的振荡电活动。当我们集中注意力、记忆或睡眠时，大脑电活动的大尺度频率会发生变化。这些各种不同的振荡通常被称为α波、β波、γ波和θ波，以赫兹为单位测量。

但从颅骨外部记录电活动限制了所能收集信息的保真度。雅各布斯的实验室专门从事颅内脑记录。患有严重癫痫的人可能在大脑内部植入了电极，以帮助定位癫痫发作的源头。在特定脑区放置约100个电极，并在患者许可的情况下，雅各布斯及其团队能够在参与者执行各种思维任务时，捕获空间和时间上的高分辨率数据。

雅各布斯及其合作者乌玛·莫汉（现为美国国立卫生研究院的神经工程师）参与了一个团队，利用这一技术观察记忆任务期间的脑活动。在2024年发表于《自然·人类行为》的一项研究中，他们描述了在 Cortex（大脑最外层区域）中沿相反方向传播的波。“它们要么从后向前，要么从前向后穿过大脑，”雅各布斯说。

雅各布斯说，理解这一结果的一个好方法是把这些波看作信息传播方向的体现。视觉区域在后部，而前额叶皮层——即“更高级”的记忆区域——在前部。如果你正在关注你所看到的东西，信号会从你眼睛中的感受器向后传到视觉皮层，然后通过波向前传入大脑其余部分以形成记忆。“这一过程的标志就是看到波从大脑后部传向前部，”雅各布斯说。

“我们认为，这是大脑利用这种组织方式在快速时间尺度上根据你需要大脑支持什么来在编码和回忆记忆功能之间切换的一种方式，”莫汉解释道。

模式转换

雅各布斯和达斯2026年的研究使这一图景变得更加复杂。它表明，这些波可以呈现出远比简单的上下运动和前后运动所产生者更为多样的形状、模式和波纹。

在实验中，团队要求参与者执行两项记忆任务。第一项是简单的语言记忆练习，他们必须回忆在屏幕上看到过的单词。第二项是更复杂的空间任务：他们在一个虚拟环境中导航，并必须回忆所遇到物体的位置。

利用高分辨率方法，雅各布斯和达斯首次在清醒人类中观察到两类新波形。一种是从皮层某一区域发出的同心波，就像石子投入湖中激起的涟漪，或者反过来，波汇聚到一个区域。另一种是沿顺时针或逆时针方向传播的旋转螺旋波，像飓风或冲马桶时的水流。

“我们在空间任务中看到旋转波的频率比在语言任务中略高，后者看到的波往往结构更简单，”雅各布斯说。“这似乎表明这些旋转波更适合执行更复杂的记忆行为。”

雅各布斯说，研究人员长期以来一直在人类中进行颅内记录，但他们通常一次只看一个电极，或者少数几个。这给人一种整个外侧皮层上都是简单波的印象。雅各布斯意识到，如果你观察间隔距离合适的电极组，波的结构和方向性就会变得更加清晰。

雅各布斯联系了匹兹堡大学的数学生物学家巴德·厄门特劳特，他一直在研究小鼠中的类似模式。厄门特劳特认为，过去观察到的简单波形模式实际上可能只是更复杂波的一部分。然而，直到最近，研究人员才获得放置在正确位置或正确空间尺度上的电极，以捕捉更大的模式。

“也许平面波只是外围的手臂，你错过了风暴之眼，”厄门特劳特说，他是2026年4月那篇论文的合著者。“在飓风中你只感觉到风朝一个方向吹。除非你正好在风眼旁边，否则你不知道它在旋转。”

由于这项研究只从患者因癫痫治疗而放置电极的位置收集数据，“我们可能遗漏了这些模式实际上有多普遍，”雅各布斯说。

不止于马达

尽管关于大脑局部电场中的这些波可能在做什么尚未达成共识，但一些科学家相信，它们为大脑提供了一条在区域之间协调活动的途径。米勒说，这些波形模式比神经元之间稳定的、更具建筑性的连接更加动态和灵活。对米勒来说，大脑会利用这个涌现的、生物物理层面的组织——它与行为在同一时间尺度上变化和移动——是合乎情理的。

“大脑的架构非常重要，行波倾向于遵循解剖结构，但它们并不严格遵循。……连接性更像是烘焙进大脑中长期存储的信息，而波则是这些信息在思维和神经处理中得到表达的时候，”米勒说。

这些波可能与多种大脑功能相关。研究发现有证据表明，它们在感觉处理、预测以及调节神经元的基础兴奋性中发挥作用，使神经元在被调用时更容易或更不容易放电。

裴昭

2026年6月发表于《科学》的一篇论文呼应了雅各布斯团队在人类癫痫患者中发现的结果。深圳医学科学院和华盛顿大学的神经科学家叶志文与尼古拉斯·斯坦梅茨也在小鼠大脑中观察到了圆形旋转波。令人着迷的是，这些波在左右半球之间是镜像对称且同步的。更有趣的是，在体感皮层——即来自感官的信息与身体运动整合的区域——轴突神经元以螺旋、圆形的排列方式连接在一起。这可能有助于产生这些飓风般的波。

“我们发现存在一个回路，即细胞之间的连接形成这些波、介导这些波，”叶说。“如果它们不重要，大脑为什么要以这种方式连接这些细胞呢？”

在2026年9月发表于《神经元》的一篇综述论文中，第一作者、德克萨斯大学达拉斯分校的莱尔·穆勒和索尔克生物研究所的约翰·雷诺兹借鉴了数十年的神经科学发现，论证视觉皮层中的行波可能有助于预测即将到来的感觉信息。他们描述了演化中的模式如何携带关于大脑刚刚经历过的信息以及当前正在经历的信息，帮助大脑对其接下来可能经历的事情做出短期预测。

米勒说，局部电场中的波可能在认知中发挥关键作用，能够兴奋或抑制底层的神经机制。他将皮层中的神经元描述为“坐在墙上的矮胖子”，摇摇欲坠地处在放电的边缘。这种振荡的电活动可以改变连接神经元的突触处的电压梯度，使它们在未来更容易或更不容易放电。

并非所有人都认同局部电场中的行波在大脑如何处理信息中发挥作用的假说。对于纽约大学的系统神经科学家捷尔吉·布扎基来说，波仅仅是突触层面底层活动的反映。你拥有的神经元越多，它们越同步，电场及其中的振荡就越强。布扎基认为，这些模式可以告诉我们关于底层回路的有趣信息，但仅此而已。“产生的电流是由突触完成的，”他说。“当电流进入神经元时，它们进行计算，产生动作电位，并相互交流。你不需要细胞外空间中发生任何事情。”

尽管这些波究竟在做什么——如果确实在做什么的话——其真正本质尚未完全确定，但越来越多的证据表明，它们可能对大脑如何实时组织、处理和表达信息至关重要。

“生物学利用规律性和可预测性，而这些波在与认知功能相关联时做着有组织的、可预测的事情，”米勒说。“如果这都不能告诉你有什么在发生，我不知道还有什么能。”

英文来源：

Surprisingly Complex Waves Reveal the Brain’s Inner Workings
Introduction
I get out of bed. I walk through the dimly lit hallway, thinking of what’s in my fridge and what I should have for breakfast. With no real effort, I’ve navigated my environment, accessed my memory, and assessed the energetic state of my body, all in the space of a few seconds. How is the brain able to do this?
Partly by harnessing electricity. The brain spends about half of its energetic resources maintaining the electrochemical gradients that keep neurons poised and ready to fire at a moment’s notice. This gives the brain an extraordinary level of flexibility in responding to the demands of everyday life. The collective electrical activity of many neurons can be seen as waves propagating through the brain from one region to the next, like the raised arms of enthusiastic spectators at a football game.
New lines of research are revealing that these waves are more complex than previously known. Typically measured by electrodes, they have been identified as basic planar waves: simply structured oscillations in neural activity. Neuroscientists have traditionally interpreted this as a bit like the sound of the brain’s engine revving, little more than a sign that it’s working. However, emerging evidence in humans and animals suggests that traveling waves play a central role in how the brain functions.
“The work coming out is moving this from ‘Are they relevant?’ to ‘This is a major motif of how the cortex processes information,’” said Earl K. Miller, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In a study published in April 2026 in Nature Communications, neuroscientists measured traveling waves of neural activity and observed a menagerie: source waves that appear to emanate from one location, sink waves that converge on a spot, and vortexlike spiral waves. The team, which included Joshua Jacobs and Anup Das from the University of Chicago, found that different behavioral tasks were associated with distinct wave patterns.
Courtesy of Joshua Jacobs
Neurons can change connections with their neighbors over time, but this usually happens on the scale of days or months. Behavior, however, needs to adapt in seconds. A significant number of neuroscientists now believe these large-scale wave patterns may help to reorganize the brain in real time to meet the behavioral demands of waking life.
“Even if the traveling wave was just the result of neurons firing, like the sound of the engine, it still tells us something very interesting about the brain based on what the person is doing,” Jacobs said. “If you see a sound moving in a direction across your engine, it means something in your engine is directionally organized.”
Back and Forth
As far back as the 1920s, neuroscientists have been measuring the brain’s oscillating electrical activity with electrodes on the surface of the scalp via electroencephalography (EEG). When we pay attention, remember, or sleep, the large-scale frequency of the brain’s electrical activity changes. These various oscillations are commonly known as alpha, beta, gamma, and theta waves, and are measured in hertz.
But recording electrical activity from outside the skull limits the fidelity of the information you can gather. Jacobs’ lab specializes in intracranial brain recordings. People with severe epilepsy may have had electrodes placed inside their brain to help locate the source of their seizures. With roughly 100 electrodes placed in a particular brain region, and with permission from the patient, Jacobs and his team are able to capture high-resolution data — across both space and time — as the participants perform various thinking tasks.
Jacobs and his collaborator Uma Mohan, who is now a neuroengineer at the National Institutes of Health, were part of a team that used this technique to observe brain activity during memory tasks. In a study published in Nature Human Behavior in 2024, they described waves moving in opposite directions across the brain’s outermost region, the cortex. “They either go back to front or front to back across the brain,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs said a good way to understand this result is to think of the waves as showing the direction of information propagation. Visual regions are in the back, and the prefrontal cortex, the “higher-level” memory region, is at the front. If you’re paying attention to what you are looking at, signals are traveling backward from receptors in your eyes to the visual cortex, and then forward into the rest of the brain via the wave to form a memory. “The signature of that is to see waves going from the back of the brain to the front,” Jacobs said.
“We thought that was a way the brain was exploiting this organization to switch between encoding and recall memory functions on a rapid timescale, depending on what you need your brain to be supporting,” Mohan explained.
Shifting Patterns
The 2026 research from Jacobs and Das complicated this picture. It showed that these waves can take on much more diverse shapes, patterns, and ripples, far beyond those created by simple up-and-down and back-to-front movement.
In the experiment, the team asked participants to perform two memory tasks. The first was a simple verbal memory exercise, in which they had to recall words they had seen on a screen. The second was a more complex spatial task: They navigated a virtual environment and had to recall the locations of objects they encountered.
With the high-resolution method, Jacobs and Das observed two new classes of waves in awake humans for the first time. One, emanating from an area of the cortex, was a concentric wave, like the ripples from a pebble dropped into a lake, or the reverse, in which waves converged on one region. The other was a rotating spiral wave traveling in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction, like a hurricane or a flushing toilet.
“We see the rotating wave in the spatial task a little bit more often than the waves we see in the verbal task, which tend to have a simpler structure,” Jacobs said. “This seems to suggest these rotating waves are better for performing more complex memory behaviors.”
Researchers have been making intracranial recordings in humans for a long time, Jacobs said, but they often only looked at one electrode at a time, or a handful. This gave an impression of simple waves across the whole outer cortex. Jacobs realized that, if you look at groups of electrodes that are separated by the right distances, the structure and directionality of the waves becomes clearer.
Jacobs got in touch with Bard Ermentrout, a mathematical biologist at the University of Pittsburgh who had been looking at similar patterns in mice. Ermentrout thinks the simple wave patterns observed in the past might actually have been part of more complex waves. However, until recently, researchers haven’t had access to electrodes placed in the right locations or at the right spatial scale to catch the larger pattern.
“Maybe the planar waves are just the outer arms, where you’re missing the eye of the storm,” Ermentrout, a co-author of the April 2026 paper, said. “In a hurricane you only feel the wind going in one direction. You don’t know that it is spinning unless you’re right there by the eye.”
Because the research only collects data from locations where the patients have had electrodes placed as part of their epilepsy treatment, “we might be missing how ubiquitous these patterns really are,” Jacobs said.
More Than the Motor
Although there is no consensus yet about what these waves in the brain’s local electric field may be doing, some scientists believe they provide another avenue for the brain to coordinate activity between regions. Miller said that these wave patterns are much more dynamic and flexible than the stable, more architectural connections between neurons. For Miller, it makes sense that the brain would exploit this emergent, biophysical layer of organization that shifts and moves on the same timescale as behavior.
“The architecture of the brain is really important, and the traveling waves tend to follow the anatomy, but they don’t strictly follow it. … The connectivity is more like the information that’s baked into the brain for long-term storage, and the waves are when that information gets expressed in terms of thought and neural processing,” Miller said.
The waves might be relevant to a variety of brain functions. Studies have found evidence that they play a role in sensory processing, prediction, and modulating the underlying excitability of neurons, making them more or less likely to fire when called upon.
Pei Zhao
A paper published in Science in June 2026 echoes the results found in human epilepsy patients by Jacobs and his team. The neuroscientists Zhiwen Ye of Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation and Nicholas Steinmetz of the University of Washington also observed circular, rotating waves, but this time in the brains of mice. Fascinatingly, these waves were mirrored and synchronized between the left and right hemispheres. What’s more, in the somatosensory cortex — where information from the senses is integrated with bodily movements — axonal neurons were wired together in a spiraling, circular arrangement. That might facilitate the production of these hurricane-like waves.
“What we found was there is a circuit, a connection of cells to form these waves, to mediate these waves,” Ye said. “If they are not important, why would the brain try to wire these cells in this way?”
In a review paper published in September 2026 in Neuron, lead authors Lyle Muller of the University of Texas at Dallas and John Reynolds of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies drew on decades of neuroscientific findings to make the case that traveling waves in the visual cortex could help with predicting upcoming sensory information. They described how evolving patterns can carry information about what the brain has just experienced alongside what it is experiencing now to help the brain make short-term predictions about what it is likely to experience next.
The waves in the local electric field may play a key role in cognition, Miller said, with the ability to excite or inhibit the underlying neural machinery. He describes neurons in the cortex as “Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall,” teetering right on the edge of firing. This oscillating electrical activity can alter the voltage gradient at the synapses that connect neurons, making them more or less likely to fire in the future.
Not everyone buys the hypothesis that traveling waves in the local electric field play a role in how the brain processes information. For György Buzsáki, a systems neuroscientist at New York University, waves are merely a reflection of what’s going on underneath, at the synaptic level. The more neurons you have, and the more synchronous they are, the stronger the electrical field and the oscillations in it will be. The patterns can tell us interesting things about the circuitry underneath, but that’s about it, according to Buzsáki. “The current that is being generated is done by synapses,” he said. “When current goes into the neuron, they do their computation and generate their action potentials and communicate with each other. You don’t need anything happening in the extracellular space.”
Although the true nature of what, if anything, these waves are doing is not fully settled, evidence is mounting that they may be important to how the brain organizes, processes, and expresses information in real time.
“Biology exploits regularity and predictability, and these waves are doing organized, predictable things in association with cognitive functions,” Miller said. “If that doesn’t tell you something is going on, I don’t know what does.”