Cross-region neuron co-firing mediated by ripple oscillations supports distributed working memory representations.

Co-occurring ripple oscillations facilitate long-range neural co-firing, supporting distributed working memory representations across up to 220 mm in the human brain.

• Why it matters: Understanding how distant brain regions coordinate during cognition is crucial, as it underpins complex processes like working memory, yet the mechanisms of long-range neural coupling remain unclear.
• What they did: Intracranial recordings from five brain regions in patients performing a working memory task revealed that ripple rates increase during all task phases, with co-occurrence boosting cross-region co-firing by about 30%, even over large distances.
• The result: This coordinated ripple activity reinstates stimulus-specific neural patterns during retrieval, enabling distributed neural representations that support human cognitive functions such as rapid recognition.