Traveling waves link human visual and frontal cortex during working memory-guided behavior.

Traveling waves guide the spatial propagation of neural activity and computational processes across the brain. Traveling waves could contribute to the control of memory-guided behaviors by flexibly organizing the timing and direction of interactions between brain regions responsible for storing memory content with those responsible for producing task-relevant behaviors. Using short-term memory as a test case, we report evidence supporting this possibility. Analyses of human EEG data revealed forward- and backward-propagating traveling waves linking visual and motor brain areas around the time of a memory-guided behavior. These waves predicted intra- and interindividual differences in task performance, could not be explained by eye movements or passive volume conduction, and were absent when participants planned but could not execute a memory-guided behavior. These findings implicate traveling waves as a mechanism in the initiation and control of memory-guided behaviors.