Time-structured communication through cross-frequency bursts

Adaptive brain function requires communication that is selective in both space and time, yet the circuit mechanisms that transiently favor specific routes of information transfer remain unclear. Here we show that, when coupled, spiking populations with distinct inhibitory timescales can reprogram one another’s intrinsic burst preferences, generating irregular multi-frequency bursts that self-organize into Multi-Frequency Oscillatory Patterns (MFOPs). State-resolved transfer entropy revealed that different MFOPs were associated with distinct Information Routing Patterns (IRPs), defining transient windows of enhanced directed transfer with specific delays and directions. At the microscopic level, the same oscillatory states selectively increased or decreased delayed spike transmission across monosynaptic pathways, yielding transmission barcodes that significantly resembled the corresponding IRPs. This repertoire was markedly reduced when inhibitory diversity was removed. These results identify coordinated multi-frequency bursting as a mechanism by which recurrent circuits can dynamically filter inputs according to source and latency.