When I hear brain waves, I tend to imagine a graph on a screen: lines rising and falling as the brain goes about its work. I had assumed those waves were mainly signs of activity.
A new theory from three MIT neuroscientists asks a more interesting question: What if the waves help organise the activity itself?
In a paper titled Analog Cognition and Consciousness, Earl K. Miller, Scott L. Brincat and Jefferson E. Roy propose that brain waves help coordinate groups of neurons as we think, respond to the world and form a unified experience of it.
What is the central idea?
Neurons communicate through electrical spikes, and their connections help store and represent information. But the brain must also decide, from moment to moment, which information matters now.
Imagine recognising a friend in a crowded room. Your brain has memories of that person, receives fresh information through your eyes and responds within a fraction of a second. The researchers suggest that travelling waves of electrical activity help bring the relevant groups of neurons into play at the right time.
In their account, slower alpha and beta waves may help guide activity associated with goals and stored information, while faster gamma activity is involved in processing incoming sensory information. The waves do not replace neurons or their connections; the proposed mechanism involves waves and neuronal activity influencing one another.
Why call it “analog” computation?
Imagine dropping two pebbles into a pond. Each creates ripples that spread outward. Where the ripples meet, their heights combine: at some points they reinforce each other; at others they partly cancel. The result depends on their strength, timing and position.
Image note: This illustration and the pond analogy are my interpretation to help explain the idea. The image is not part of the original Technology Org article or the research paper, and it does not depict actual brain waves.
The researchers propose that travelling electrical waves in the brain could interact in a somewhat similar way, helping shape which neurons become active and when. That is the analog idea: changing physical properties of waves may help the brain process information
A digital computer commonly represents information using discrete states, such as zeroes and ones. In the proposed brain mechanism, the timing, strength and location of wave activity could matter directly. That does not mean the entire brain works like an analog computer, or that waves think independently of neurons.
And what about consciousness?
Here the proposal becomes more ambitious. The researchers suggest that widespread, coordinated wave activity may help bring separate parts of the brain into an integrated state. Such organisation, they argue, could contribute to our unified awareness of thoughts and experiences.
That is fascinating, but it is a theory, not a discovery that settles consciousness. Brain waves can be measured, and researchers have evidence that their organisation changes with cognition and under anaesthesia. The authors still need direct evidence that the particular analog computations they propose are actually taking place. Miller identifies that as a next step.
What stays with me is the shift in perspective. Perhaps brain waves are more than traces left behind by thought. They may be part of how the brain brings its many activities together quickly enough for us to think, act and experience a coherent moment.
Sources and credit :
This post was prompted by “Cognition and consciousness arise from analog computations, says new theory” on Technology Org, written by David Orenstein and sourced from MIT.
The underlying research is “Analog Cognition and Consciousness” by Earl K. Miller, Scott L. Brincat and Jefferson E. Roy, published in The Journal of Neuroscience in 2026.
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