Human hippocampal ripples tune cortical responses based on predicted uncertainty
14 affiliations
- 1Andrew Mayes Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK. [email protected]
- 2Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience, Centre for Biomedical Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, IdISSC, Madrid, Spain. [email protected]
- 3Department of Experimental Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- 4Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience, Centre for Biomedical Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, IdISSC, Madrid, Spain
- 5Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital and University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- 6Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- 7Movement Disorders and Neuromodulation Unit, Department of Neurology, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- 8Brigham & Women's Hospital, Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics, Boston, MA, USA
- 9Department of Neurosurgery, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
- 10Swiss Epilepsy Center, Klinik Lengg, Zurich, Switzerland
- 11Epilepsy Unit, Department of Neurology, Hospital Ruber Internacional, Madrid, Spain
- 12Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK
- 13IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing, China. [email protected]
- 14Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience, Centre for Biomedical Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, IdISSC, Madrid, Spain. [email protected]
Abstract
To encode information efficiently, our perceptual system should detect when situations are unpredictable (that is, informative) and modulate brain dynamics to prepare for encoding. Under uncertainty, there is an increased need to generate predictions about upcoming information, a process that has been proposed to require coordinated activity between the hippocampus and neocortex. Here we show, with direct recordings from the human hippocampus and visual cortex, that after exposure to unpredictable visual stimulus streams, hippocampal ripple activity increases in frequency and duration before stimulus presentation. Prestimulus hippocampal ripples suppress changes in visual cortex gamma activity associated with uncertainty and modulate poststimulus prediction error gamma responses in higher-level visual cortex to surprising stimuli. We reveal a function of hippocampal ripples in facilitating the propagation of visual stimuli based on the expected information gain. These results, therefore, link hippocampal ripples with predictive coding accounts of neuronal message passing and precision-weighted prediction errors, revealing a mechanism relevant for perceptual synthesis and subsequent memory encoding.
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BibTeX
@article{frank2026human,
title = {{Human hippocampal ripples tune cortical responses based on predicted uncertainty}},
author = {Darya Frank and Stephan Moratti and Robin Hellerstedt and Johannes Sarnthein and Ningfei Li and Andreas Horn and Lukas Imbach and Lennart Henning Stieglitz and António Gil‐Nagel and Rafael Toledano and Karl John Friston and Bryan Andrew Strange},
journal = {Nature Neuroscience},
year = {2026},
month = jun,
doi = {10.1038/s41593-026-02345-6},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02345-6},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Human hippocampal ripples tune cortical responses based on predicted uncertainty
AU - Darya Frank
AU - Stephan Moratti
AU - Robin Hellerstedt
AU - Johannes Sarnthein
AU - Ningfei Li
AU - Andreas Horn
AU - Lukas Imbach
AU - Lennart Henning Stieglitz
AU - António Gil‐Nagel
AU - Rafael Toledano
AU - Karl John Friston
AU - Bryan Andrew Strange
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/06/25
JO - Nature Neuroscience
DO - 10.1038/s41593-026-02345-6
UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02345-6
AB - To encode information efficiently, our perceptual system should detect when situations are unpredictable (that is, informative) and modulate brain dynamics to prepare for encoding. Under uncertainty, there is an increased need to generate predictions about upcoming information, a process that has been proposed to require coordinated activity between the hippocampus and neocortex. Here we show, with direct recordings from the human hippocampus and visual cortex, that after exposure to unpredictable visual stimulus streams, hippocampal ripple activity increases in frequency and duration before stimulus presentation. Prestimulus hippocampal ripples suppress changes in visual cortex gamma activity associated with uncertainty and modulate poststimulus prediction error gamma responses in higher-level visual cortex to surprising stimuli. We reveal a function of hippocampal ripples in facilitating the propagation of visual stimuli based on the expected information gain. These results, therefore, link hippocampal ripples with predictive coding accounts of neuronal message passing and precision-weighted prediction errors, revealing a mechanism relevant for perceptual synthesis and subsequent memory encoding.
SN - 1097-6256
SN - 1546-1726
ER -