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Humans Share a ‘Universal’ Brainwave Pattern with Other Primates
And scientists think they know what these patterns mean
We, Humans, have tried to separate ourselves from the rest of the Natural world for the last several thousand years. Yet modern research using advanced technology is painting a very different picture. Rather than affirming our egotistical notion that we are superior to other animals, research is finding a growing number of similarities we share with them.
You’ll find several examples in the archive of my newsletter, Curious Adventure, and today, I’m sharing another one. A collaborative team of scientists identified distinct patterns of electrical activity throughout the six microscopic layers of the brain’s cortex. Remarkably, these patterns occur across the brains of multiple primate species, including us.
Previous Research
When André Bastos was a postdoctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he conducted several studies involving monkeys with Earl Miller, Bastos’ professor and a member of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. Throughout their research, they identified distinct activity patterns in six layers of the cerebral cortex — the wrinkly outer and, therefore, most visible part of the brain.
