Science: Single Brain Cells Can Recognize Objects

Single brain cells, if confronted with a difficult task, can identify objects as dissimilar as sports cars and dogs, new research finds.

A separate study last year found that a memory can be stored in a single brain cell.

And in other previous studies, Earl K. Miller, a professor of neuroscience at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, found that individual neurons in monkeys' brains can become tuned to the concept of "cat" and others to the concept of "dog."

This time, Miller and colleagues Jason Cromer and Jefferson Roy recorded activity in the monkeys' brains as the animals switched back and forth between distinguishing cats vs. dogs and sports cars vs. sedans. Although they found individual neurons that were more attuned to car images and others to animal images, to their surprise, there were many neurons active in both categories.

From Single Brain Cells Can Recognize Objects by Livescience Staff, June 9, 2010 at livescience.com.