Now, Salk Institute neuroscientists have brought together physiological and computational research on these waves and proposed a broader explanation for what they do. Their conclusion is that neural traveling waves may function as a computational engine in the visual cortex. By moving through neural circuits, the waves may help the visual cortex (and likely other areas of the brain) create internal representations of the outside world, supporting our ability to perceive what is happening, reconstruct recent information, and anticipate what may happen next.

The review was published in Neuron on July 21, 2026.

Why Traveling Brain Waves Matter

Salk neuroscientist John Reynolds, PhD, was the first to identify traveling brain waves in the visual systems of awake animals back in 2020. His laboratory also discovered that the waves were directly associated with whether an animal successfully noticed an object placed in front of it.

That finding may help explain a familiar experience: looking repeatedly for something, such as a pair of keys, only to realize it was visible the entire time. The object was present, but the brain did not successfully register it at that particular moment.

Once Reynolds and his colleagues had established that traveling waves occur in awake animals and can influence whether a visual stimulus is perceived, a larger question emerged: Why does the brain generate these waves in the first place?

"This paper lays out, for the first time in a single integrated framework, what the brain can actually compute by virtue of having this recurrent wave-generating circuitry," says Reynolds, senior and co-corresponding author of the paper.

A Possible Engine for Perception and Prediction

The researchers concentrated on the visual cortex and proposed four major functions for neural traveling waves. The waves may adjust perception from moment to moment, transform recent sensory information into an internal representation, produce short-term predictions about the surrounding world, and preserve and replay patterns associated with memories of events that unfold over time.

Together, these abilities suggest that traveling waves may be central to how the brain interprets incoming information rather than simply reflecting background electrical activity.

Brain Waves May Be More Than Electrical Noise

Under the new framework, neural brain waves are not merely electrical noise passing through the nervous system. The connections responsible for generating the waves do more than transmit signals. They can alter their physiology ("synaptic weights") in ways that reflect information learned from the outside world.

Every sight, smell, sound, and action experienced by an animal can modify the connections involved in producing these waves. Over time, those changes help shape the neural circuitry the brain relies on to create an internal representation of its surroundings.

"This is, in a meaningful sense, analogous to what large language models like ChatGPT do," explains Reynolds. "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 -- a biological generative model built from the ground up by experience."

How the Brain Builds an Internal Model of the World

Whenever sensory information reaches the brain, the brain faces a basic problem: what am I most likely sensing right now?

The environment is enormously complicated, but it also follows many predictable rules. Objects occupy 3D space. The images projected onto the retina continually change as the eyes and body move. Those changing signals also exist within the constraints imposed by physics and physiology.

The new framework proposes that the brain learns these recurring patterns and stores them within networks of synapses. Those networks can then generate traveling waves that help the brain determine the most likely causes of incoming sensory information and assemble an internal model of the surrounding world.

In this view, traveling waves may help explain how the brain transforms a constant flood of complicated sensory signals into coherent perceptions, predictions, behaviors, and experiences. Understanding that process could bring scientists closer to explaining how the brain computes the busy and often messy world around us.

Other Authors and Funding

Other authors of this study include Lyle Muller of UT Dallas and Fields Institute, Alexandra Busch of Fields Institute and Western University, and Zachary Davis of the University of Utah.

This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (R01 EY028723, U01 NS131914, and U01 NS139877, EY014800), Research to Prevent Blindness, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Western University, Compute Ontario, and Digital Research Alliance of Canada.