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The brain makes a lot of waste. Now scientists think they know where it goes

The brain appears to rely on synchronized waves to wash out waste products, including toxins associated with Alzheimer's disease.

The new studies come more than a decade after Iliff and Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, a Danish scientist, first proposed that the clear fluids in and around the brain are part of a system to wash away waste products. It turned out that the waves were acting as a signal, synchronizing the activity of neurons and transforming them into tiny pumps that push fluid toward the brain's surface, the team reported in February in the journal Nature. In a second paper published in the same issue of Nature, a team led by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provided more evidence that slow electrical waves help clear out waste.

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