Unique patterns of electrical signals (“coherence potentials”) are “cloned” or spread to neurons in different areas of the brain, National Institute of Mental Health researchers have found.

They used arrays of electrodes implanted in the brains of two awake macaque monkeys and embedded in dish-grown neuron cultures.

The purpose of coherence potentials may be to trigger activity in the various parts of the brain that store aspects of the same experience. So a smell or taste, say, might trigger a coherence potential that then activates the same potential in neurons in the visual part of the brain.