In a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, lead author and neurophysiologist Charles Dickey identified patterns of ripples - brief high frequency oscillations in neural activity - that synchronize across the human brain during spontaneous waking and memory recall.1 These ripples fan out across distant areas of the cerebral cortex (the wrinkly surface of the brain) that are responsible for the sensory elements involved in any mental event, and extend to the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped structure key to memory. Many studies had previously investigated ripples in the rat hippocampus and their relationship to memory, but Dickey only recently identified ripples in the human cortex. There are several competing theories about networks of neuronal activity that may facilitate communication between different areas of the brain to give rise to conscious experience.2 But this may be the first observed mechanism that could potentially solve the so-call