Amazing stuff!
"
- A study ... has demonstrated how neurons in the human brain generate memories and establish narratives. ...
- For the first time, it has been confirmed that, contrary to previous beliefs, individual neurons represent the concepts we learn, regardless of the context in which we encounter them.
- This allows humans, unlike other animals, to establish higher and more abstract relationships, which lays the foundation of human intelligence.
..."
From the highlights and abstract:
"Highlights
• In a naturalistic memory task, we show that hippocampal neurons are not modulated by context
• We observe similar single-neuron responses to the same concepts in different tasks
• Neurons do not show conjunctive coding (i.e., responding only in specific contexts or tasks)
• This context-invariant coding could be a key, unique feature of human intelligence
Summary
In subjects implanted with intracranial electrodes, we use two different stories involving the same person (or place) to evaluate whether and to what extent context modulates human single-neuron responses.
Nearly all neurons (97% during encoding and 100% during recall) initially responding to a person/place do not modulate their response with context. Likewise, nearly none (<1%) of the initially non-responsive neurons show conjunctive coding, responding to particular persons/places in a particular context during the tasks.
In line with these findings, taking all neurons together it is possible to decode the person/place being depicted in each story, but not the particular story. Moreover, the neurons show consistent results across encoding and recall of the stories and during passive viewing of pictures.
These results suggest a context invariant, non-conjunctive coding of memories at the single-neuron level in the human hippocampus and amygdala, in contrast to what has been described in other species."
Possible Foundations of Human Intelligence Observed for the First Time (original news release)
Lack of context modulation in human single neuron responses in the medial temporal lobe (open access)
Graphical abstract
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