Traveling Brain Waves May Be a Core Engine of Perception, Salk Scientists Propose

Neuroscientists at the Salk Institute have proposed that electrical activity moving across the brain's surface, known as neural traveling waves, may function as a computational engine behind perception and memory rather than simply background activity. The review, published in the journal Neuron on July 21, 2026, brings together physiological and computational research on the waves for the first time in a single framework.

Traveling waves were first identified in the visual systems of awake animals in 2020 by Salk neuroscientist John Reynolds, whose laboratory also found that the waves were directly linked to whether an animal successfully noticed an object placed in front of it. That finding may explain a familiar experience: repeatedly searching for something, such as a set of keys, only to realize it was visible the whole time. The object was present, but the brain did not register it at that moment.

The researchers propose four major functions for the waves in the visual cortex: adjusting perception moment to moment, transforming recent sensory information into an internal representation, generating short-term predictions about the surrounding world, and preserving and replaying patterns tied to memories that unfold over time. Under this framework, every sight, sound and action an animal experiences can reshape the connections that generate the waves, gradually shaping the circuitry the brain uses to model its surroundings.

"This is, in a meaningful sense, analogous to what large language models like ChatGPT do," Reynolds said. "They learn statistical structure from language and use that knowledge to generate meaningful and appropriately structured text that reflects the patterns of language. The brain may be doing something functionally similar." Other authors on the review include Lyle Muller of UT Dallas and the Fields Institute, Alexandra Busch of the Fields Institute and Western University, and Zachary Davis of the University of Utah.