Neuroscientists listened to people’s brains for a week. They found order and chaos.

Guman, Wang and colleagues turned to people undergoing brain surgery for epilepsy. Some people with severe or otherwise intractable epilepsy choose to surgically remove the small parts of their brain that trigger seizures. Electrodes are implanted in their brains for a week or so before any surgery. At that time, these electrodes monitor brain activity, to help surgeons pinpoint where seizures start and to know exactly which brain needs to be removed.

The researchers recruited 20 individuals to volunteer for their study. Each person is implanted with 10 to 15 electrodes over a period of three to 12 days.

The pair collected recordings from the electrodes during the entire period. The volunteers were all in the hospital when they were monitored, but they were still doing daily activities such as eating, talking with friends, watching TV or reading books. “We know very little about what the brain does in these apparently natural behaviors,” Guman says.

The edge of chaos

The team found some interesting patterns in brain activity over the course of the week. Certain brain networks appear to communicate with each other in a “dance”-like manner, with one region appearing to “hear” and another “talking,” the researchers said in a presentation at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting in San Francisco. Diego last year.

And while the volunteers’ minds seemed to drift between different states over time, they did so with enthusiasm. Instead of simply moving from one movement pattern to another, their minds seemed to zip between several other states in between, seemingly at random. As the mind moves from one semi-stable state to another, it seems to embrace chaos.