What keeps your brain organised?

What keeps your brain organised?

Watch the video for a useful visual metaphor for the fascinating coordinating role of infraslow waves synchronizing the electrical pulsing of a brain network.

We have 52 regions in the brain (each with different primary functions).  However, each of them can join with any one or more of the other regions to form a network or ‘functional connectome’: a group of regions working together on a task. It is possible for a region to join with more than one network, switching between them depending on the active or resting state of an individual. And each network is associated with a different ‘mode’ of operation: a bit like having 52 ingredients and each time you use a different combination, so you create a different ‘flavour’. The co-ordination of switching between networks is strongly associated with the role of infraslow waves.

Infraslow waves can be detected using fMRIs and EEGs.  They are very slow waves with a frequency of 0.008 to 0.1Hz; and were first discovered by Russian scientists, Nina Aladjalova and Valentina Iliiukhina in 1957.

In 1995, as a young medical graduate, Bharat Biswal of Medical College of Wisconsin, observed that distal brain regions were activate whilst subjects were at rest.  Whilst other scientists may have dismissed this as ‘spontaneous neuronal chatter”, Biswal discovered it is not random but instead is structured and organized, giving rise to the idea of the brain as an instrument of correlated activity.

In 2001, neurologist Marcus Raichle and colleagues discovered the Default Mode Network (DMN) in 2001.  The ‘default mode’ of the brain describes a type of baseline brain function and what regions of the brain are interconnected when the brain is not actively engaged or focussed on a task. They observed that even when a person is at rest, certain brain regions remain highly active.

In the past quarter of a century, research has been uncovering various Resting State Networks (RSNs) but exciting research in 2025 by Nico Dosenbach has illuminated the Active Mode Network AMN) associated with awake states.   Also in 2025, Achille Gillig, of Université de Bordeaux and colleagues have distinguished at least 33 networks which the brain cycles between.  These are classified and visually described via their GINNA classification tool (Groupe d’Imagerie Neurofonctionnelle Network Atlas, a comprehensive brain atlas).

In 2018, Brendon Watson of the University of Michigan hypothesised that infraslow waves have a coordinating role with neural networks.  Similarly, Gyorgy Buszaki of the Buszaki Laboratory has long been a proponent of infraslow oscillations being relevant to the coordination of these networks of brain activity – his enthusiasm for this alternative understanding of brain function is commendable, and as science discovers more about these electrical waves, so Buszaki’s explanations seem more and more plausible.

I just love this video as an easy way to convey how infraslow waves (the cans) co-ordinate the platform (other brain wave patterns e.g. delta, theta, etc) to bring different networks (the metronomes) into sync or alignment with one another.

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