What neuroscientists know about the brain is a tiny fraction of what remains undiscovered. Moreover, often what we think we know about the brain ends up being incorrect.

Researchers at Cornell University recently discovered that what we thought we knew about working memory and the brain was incomplete, according to a study published in the journal Cell and summarized in Neuroscience News.  (Working memory is short-term memory.)

Previously, it was believed that the function of working memory in humans primarily lies in the pre-frontal cortex, that area of the brain behind our foreheads and front top of the brain, with sensory processing parts of the brain playing secondary roles.  The Cornell researchers found that multiple areas of the brain are involved in working memory, including and especially the thalamus, and that synchronous communications between the pre-frontal cortex and the thalamus are important for working memory.

This has practical implications. Neurofeedback practitioners know that several electrical frequencies, or speeds, are produced in the thalamus—including theta, low and high alpha, and low beta—and are projected throughout the brain. This means that training to improve working memory can happen not only by training the pre-frontal cortex, but by training brainwave synchrony and using a whole-brain approach that works the entire brain rather than just one or two places on the scalp.  In plain English, this means that practitioners who train multiple places on the brain have been covering these areas, even prior to the awareness that the thalamus and pre-frontal cortex work together.

It’s so important to understand that the brain is not a computer or even a machine with gears. It’s complex and dynamic and interconnected in ways that are exciting to discover. Respecting this complexity leads to better brain training.

You can read the Neuroscience News summary here.  The journal article in Cell is behind a pay wall but accessible here.