The Role of Neural Oscillations in Incidental Learning

This paper reviews and synthesizes studies investigating the role of neural oscillations in incidental learning—the spontaneous acquisition of knowledge during everyday activities without conscious effort to memorize. We interpret findings through the lens of working memory (WM), given that information represented and maintained in WM is more likely to be offloaded into long-term memory (LTM), ultimately giving rise to incidental learning. Accordingly, we suggest that theta oscillations serve as an organizing rhythm that establishes discrete temporal windows within which information can be encoded into and maintained within WM via nested gamma oscillations. Alpha oscillations act as an attentional filter, influencing what information is more likely to be processed and encoded into WM, while beta clears prior WM contents. By influencing what information is prioritized, encoded into, and maintained within WM, these coordinated oscillatory dynamics determine the likelihood of information being offloaded into LTM, ultimately manifesting as incidental learning. This review offers an integrative framework for understanding how neural oscillations support incidental learning and highlights critical directions for future research, including the need for causal methods to directly establish the mechanistic role of these rhythms in LTM formation.