alt Hacker NewsRegardless of how these large scale coordinated dynamics arose, initially functional and selected for, or just epiphenomena (coupled oscillators?), it seems that they HAVE to have become functional (presumably longer range inter-region communication and sequencing) since timing does matter.
If we assume that brain waves do have (have to have) some effect, then it seems most likely that the effect is either beneficial or detrimental compared to the alternative of uncorrelated brain activity, and therefore is being selected for or against, and as the production of millions of years of evolution, it seems the logical conclusion is that there is some functional benefit to it. The alternative is that the functional effect is merely benign, neither beneficial or detrimental, but this intuitively seems less likely.
I’m with you on finding it hard to think they’re just epiphenomena of coupled oscillators. And from the timing perspective and their spatial spread, I think it’s a solid hypothesis they actually contribute to the coupling.
That actually happens in the narrow spatial scale of ephaptic coupling already, where neighboring neurons can sense one another firing and get primed to fire, which helps with synchronization.
Where there’s still debate is in these larger waves, which sweep through very diverse architectures.
And again, part of the answer may be to look at astrocytes, since they can actually tune their syncitium, and some at least can give out glutamate as a signal, and are electrically active: https://www.quantamagazine.org/these-cells-spark-electricity...