On the same wavelength-- literally The human brain is bombarded
with all kinds of information, from the memory of last night’s
delicious dinner to the instructions from your boss at your
morning meeting. But how do you “tune in” to just one thought or
idea and ignore all the rest of what is going on around you,
until it comes time to think of something else? In "Frequency of
gamma oscillations routes flow of information in the
hippocampus", published in the 19 November issue of Nature,
researchers at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and
Centre for the Biology of Memory describe a mechanism that the
brain uses to filter out distracting thoughts. Think of your
brain like a radio: You’re turning the knob to find your
favourite station, but the knob jams, and you’re stuck listening
to something that’s in between stations. It’s a frustrating
combination that makes it quite hard to get an update on swine
flu while a Michael Jackson song wavers in and out. Staying on
the right frequency is the only way t