Beta traveling waves in monkey frontal and parietal areas encode recent reward history

Brain function depends on neural communication, but the mechanisms of this communication are not well understood. Recent studies suggest that one form of neural communication is through traveling waves (TWs)—patterns of neural oscillations that propagate within and between brain areas. We show that TWs are robust in microarray recordings in frontal and parietal cortex and encode recent reward history. Two adult male monkeys made saccades to obtain probabilistic rewards and were sensitive to the (statistically irrelevant) reward on the previous trial. TWs in frontal and parietal areas were stronger in trials that followed a prior reward versus a lack of reward and, in the frontal lobe, correlated with the monkeys’ behavioral sensitivity to the prior reward. The findings suggest that neural communication mediated by TWs within the frontal and parietal lobes contribute to maintaining information about recent reward history and mediating the impact of this history on the monkeys’ expectations.