The human brain is constantly processing information that unfolds at different speeds – from split-second reactions to sudden environmental changes to slower, more reflective processes such as understanding context or meaning. A new study from Rutgers Health, published in Nature Communications, sheds light on how the brain integrates these fast and slow signals across its complex web of white matter connectivity pathways to support cognition and behavior.
Different regions of the brain are specialized for processing information over specific time windows, a property known as intrinsic neural timescales, or INTs for short. “To affect our environment through action, our brains must combine information processed over different timescales,” said Linden Parkes, assistant professor of psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the senior author of the study. “The brain achieves this by leveraging its white matter connectivity to share information across regions, and this integration is crucial for human behavior.”
To investigate how this integration works, Parkes and his team analyzed multimodal brain imaging data from 960 individuals. They built detailed maps of each person’s brain connectivity, known as connectomes, and applied mathematical models that describe how complex systems change over time to understand how information flows through these networks. To read the full story.