Making memories or fireworks?


New studies from his lab and others have suggested that the brain tags experiences worth remembering by repeatedly sending out sudden and powerful high-frequency brain waves. 

Known as “sharp wave ripples,” these waves, kicked up by the firing of many thousands of neurons within milliseconds of each other, are “like a fireworks show in the brain,” said Wannan Yang, a doctoral student in Buzsáki’s lab [at NYU] who led the new work, which was published in Science in March. They [sharp wave ripples] fire when the mammalian brain is at rest, whether during a break between tasks or during sleep.

Sharp wave ripples were already known to be involved in consolidating memories or storing them. The new research shows that they’re also involved in selecting them —pointing to the importance of these waves throughout the process of long-term memory formation.

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