New research shows that rhythmic brain activity is key to temporarily maintaining important information in memory. Researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester published these findings today in Current Biology that found brain rhythms—or patterns of neuronal activity—organize the bursts of activity in the brain that maintain short-term connections.

“The thought has been that the temporary storage of important information is linked to neurons in the brain that just fire away, retaining that information until it is no longer needed. Recent research has shown that it might not be such persistent brain activity that matters most for the temporary storage of information, but rather a short-term strengthening of the connections between neurons that are representing the information. Our research shows that brain rhythms are organizing these transient bursts over time,” said Ian Fiebelkorn, Ph.D., assistant professor of Neuroscience and senior author of the study.

“The rhythmic coordination of brain activity over time is important because it allows overlapping populations of neurons to store different pieces of information at the same time.”

Lead author Jon Walbrin explains, “Most previous social neuroscience studies have focused on measuring responses to other people as individuals. But more recently there has been an increased interest in understanding brain responses to others in the context of social interactions. However, very little is currently known about how such responses develop during childhood.”

“These results suggest that children and adults might employ different strategies for interaction understanding: Adults rely more on observable, body-based information, while children—with less social experience—engage more in effortful reasoning about what others are thinking and feeling during an interaction. This likely reflects the process of learning to understand interactive behavior.”