Human hippocampal ripples tune cortical responses based on predicted uncertainty

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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Publication Details

Journal
Nature Neuroscience
Published
2026-06-25
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02345-6
Primary Topic
Neural dynamics and brain function
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Human hippocampal ripples tune cortical responses based on predicted uncertainty

Stephan Moratti, Bryan A. Strange, António Gil‐Nagel, Darya Frank et al.
Nature Neuroscience
Neural dynamics and brain function
article

Human hippocampal ripples tune cortical responses based on predicted uncertainty

Stephan Moratti, Bryan A. Strange, António Gil‐Nagel, Darya Frank, Lennart Stieglitz, Andreas Horn, Ningfei Li, Robin Hellerstedt, Johannes Sarnthein, Karl Friston, Rafael Toledano, Lukas Imbach
article en

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.

Nature Neuroscience
Universidad Complutense de Madrid (ES), Harvard University (US), Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging (GB), Peking University (CN), University of Zurich (CH), University of Manchester (GB), ETH Zurich (CH), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (DE), Massachusetts General Hospital (US), Circuit Therapeutics (United States) (US), University Hospital of Zurich (CH), Chinese Institute for Brain Research (CN), Hospital Ruber Internacional (ES), Swiss Epilepsy Center (CH), University College London (GB), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (ES)
Quality Education
Openalex Percentile: Top 6%
Neural dynamics and brain function
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