Empirical demonstration of Spacetime Neural Representations in biological brains

Establish, through empirical measurement, whether Spacetime Neural Representations—information encoded in the phase differences of traveling waves such that the precise neuron identities are irrelevant and the waveform preserves the information as it propagates—are implemented in biological neural circuits.

Background

Box 7 defines a Spacetime Neural Representation as a translation-invariant encoding in which information is carried by the phase relationships along a traveling wave, independent of the exact neurons that are active at any moment as the waveform moves across cortex.

The authors note suggestive evidence linking propagating waves to working memory performance but emphasize that a direct empirical demonstration of this representational scheme in the brain has not yet been achieved.