Sparse but not 'Grandmother-cell' coding in the medial temporal lobe
Abstract
Although a large number of neuropsychological and imaging studies have demonstrated that the medial temporal lobe (MTL) plays an important role in human memory, there are few data regarding the activity of neurons involved in this process. The MTL receives massive inputs from visual cortical areas, and evidence over the last decade has consistently shown that MTL neurons respond selectively to complex visual stimuli. Here, we focus on how the activity patterns of these cells might reflect the transformation of visual percepts into long-term memories. Given the very sparse and abstract representation of visual information by these neurons, they could in principle be considered as 'grandmother cells'. However, we give several arguments that make such an extreme interpretation unlikely.
Additional Information
Available online 11 February 2008. c2007 Elsevier Ltd. We thank all patients for their participation, E. Behnke, T. Fields, E. Ho, E. Isham, A. Kraskov and C. Wilson for technical assistance and S. Waydo and F. Mormann for comments on this manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the NINDS, NIMH, NSF, DARPA, Epilepsy Foundation, EPSRC and the Life Science Interface Programme, the Office of Naval Research, the W. M. Keck Foundation Fund for Discovery in Basic Medical Research, the McGovern Institute, Children's Hospital Ophthalmology Foundation, the Gordon Moore Foundation, the Sloan Foundation and the Swartz Foundation for Computational Neuroscience.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 40648
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.tics.2007.12.003
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20130816-103347294
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
- National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
- NSF
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
- Epilepsy Foundation of America
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
- Life Science Interface Programme
- Office of Naval Research (ONR)
- W. M. Keck Foundation
- McGovern Institute
- Children's Hospital Ophthalmology Foundation
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- Swartz Foundation for Computational Neuroscience
- Created
-
2008-03-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Koch Laboratory (KLAB)