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Concept cells help your brain abstract information and build memories
Individual cells in the brain light up for specific ideas. These concept neurons, once known as “Jennifer Aniston cells,” help us think, imagine and remember episodes from our lives.
We know that the brain processes information about the outside world through the complex dynamics of circuits of neurons, said the mathematician Valeriy Makarov Slizneva of the Complutense University of Madrid, who has done theoretical calculations to prove that concept cells exist. In the 1990s, a research group at the University of California, Los Angeles, led by the neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried, developed a new kind of electrode that could look at the activity of individual neurons — an unprecedented level of resolution at the time. Because memories are so important for our survival, it is “the best explanation for why our brain can afford the luxury of having such high specialization to independent semantic concepts,” said Sina Mackay, a graduate student at the University of Bonn who works with Mormann.
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