• Posted January 5, 2026

New Study Explains Why Brains Process Information at Different Speeds

The human brain is always working, reacting in a split second to dangerous events while slowly making sense of meaning, memories and decisions.

A new study from Rutgers Health explains how the brain pulls these fast and slow signals together to support thinking and behavior. The research was published recently in the journal Nature Communications.

Scientists say different parts of the brain are programmed to process information over different lengths of time. Some areas react almost instantly, while others take longer to analyze details. These time patterns are known as intrinsic neural timescales, or INTs, researchers explained.

“To affect our environment through action, our brains must combine information processed over different timescales,” said senior author Linden Parkes, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Rutgers University Brain Health Institute in Piscataway, N.J.

To better understand how this works, researchers analyzed detailed brain scans from 960 people. They mapped how different brain regions are connected and then used mathematical models to examine how information moves through these networks over time.

“Our work probes the mechanisms underlying this process in humans by directly modeling regions’ INTs from their connectivity,” Parkes explained in a news release.

The study found that the way processing is arranged across the brain plays a key role in how easily the brain shifts between different activity patterns that are tied to behavior.

Researchers also found that this organization varies from person to person.

“We found that differences in how the brain processes information at different speeds help explain why people vary in their cognitive abilities,” Parkes said.

The team also discovered that these brain patterns are tied to genetics and cellular features of brain tissue. Similar patterns were found in mice, suggesting this system is also shared across other species.

“People whose brain wiring is better matched to the way different regions handle fast and slow information tend to show higher cognitive capacity," Parkes added.

The researchers now plan to explore how disruptions in these brain networks may play a role in conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

More information

There’s more about how the brain works at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

SOURCE: Rutgers University-New Brunswick, news release, Jan. 3, 2026