For the brain, timing is everything

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For the brain, timing is everything

For decades the dominant approach to understanding the brain has been to measure how many times individual neurons activate during particular behaviors. In contrast to this “rate code,” a more recent hypothesis proposes that neurons signal information by changing the precise timing when they activate. One such timing code, called phase precession, is commonly observed in rodents as they navigate through spaces and is thought to form the basis for how the brain represents memories for sequences. Surprisingly, phase precession has never been seen in humans, and thus its usefulness in explaining brain function and creating brain-machine interfaces has been quite limited.

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