Researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute report that rotating waves of neural activity help the brain recover focus after distraction. In animal studies, the extent of these rotations tracked performance: full rotations aligned with correct responses, while incomplete cycles were linked to errors. The timing between a distraction and response also mattered, suggesting a timing‑dependent recovery cycle.
As easily as the mind can drift off course, it can also refocus. Researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory describe how that may work: in an animal study, they observed synchronized neural activity that appears as a rotating wave across the cortex, guiding thought back to the task at hand.
"The rotating waves act like herders that steer the cortex back to the correct computational path," said senior author Earl K. Miller, Picower Professor in The Picower Institute and MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
Tamal Batabyal, a postdoctoral researcher at the Picower Institute, led the work, which was published on Nov. 3, 2025, in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
During the experiments, animals performed a visual working‑memory task that was occasionally interrupted by distractions. Performance typically dipped—producing errors or slower reaction times—while scientists recorded electrical activity from hundreds of neurons in the prefrontal cortex, a region central to higher cognition.
To examine how populations of neurons coordinated over time, the team applied a mathematical approach they refer to as subspace coding. After distractions, activity traced a rotating trajectory in this subspace—an effect Miller likened to “starlings murmuring in the sky,” circling back into formation. The degree of rotation predicted behavior: when distractions were overcome, neural activity formed a complete circle; when they weren’t, the rotation fell short on average by about 30 degrees and progressed more slowly. Recovery improved when more time elapsed between distraction and required response, allowing the rotation to complete.
Notably, these rotations appeared only after distractions—regardless of the type tested—and did not arise spontaneously during the task.
Mathematical rotations reflect physical traveling waves
Although subspace coding is an abstract representation, direct measurements indicated a real, traveling wave rotating across the cortex at the same speed as the rotation observed in subspace. “There is no reason in principle why a rotation in this mathematical subspace should correspond directly to a rotation on the surface of the cortex,” Miller said. “But it does. That suggests to me that the brain is using these traveling waves to actually do computation, analog computation. Analog computation is way more energy efficient than digital and biology favors energy efficient solutions. It’s a different, and more natural, way to think about neural computation.”
Co‑authors include Scott Brincat, Jacob Donoghue, Mikael Lundqvist and Meredith Mahnke. The study was supported by the Office of Naval Research, the Simons Center for the Social Brain, the Freedom Together Foundation and The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.
