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Neuroscience

Friends and grandmothers

Nature volume 435, pages 1036–1037 (2005)Cite this article

How do neurons in the brain represent movie stars, famous buildings and other familiar objects? Rare recordings from single neurons in the human brain provide a fresh perspective on the question.

‘Grandmother cell’ is a term coined by J. Y. Lettvin to parody the simplistic notion that the brain has a separate neuron to detect and represent every object (including one's grandmother)1. The phrase has become a shorthand for invoking all of the overwhelming practical arguments against a one-to-one object coding scheme2. No one wants to be accused of believing in grandmother cells. But on page 1102 of this issue, Quiroga et al.3 describe a neuron in the human brain that looks for all the world like a ‘Jennifer Aniston’ cell. Ms Aniston could well become a grandmother herself someday. Are vision scientists now forced to drop their dismissive tone when discussing the neural representation of matriarchs?

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Figure 1: Sparseness and invariance in neural coding of visual stimuli.

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  1. the Department of Neuroscience and the Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 21218, Maryland, USA

    Charles E. Connor

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  1. Charles E. Connor
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Connor, C. Friends and grandmothers. Nature 435, 1036–1037 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/4351036a

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