Monday, June 19, 2017

Brain & Facial Encoding/Recognition

Earlier this year I mentioned the “Jennifer Aniston neuron,” so called, which led some to believe that the representation of an entire face may be filed in a single neuron. They reportedly touched a single neuron inside a person’s brain and the patient reported seeing Jennifer Aniston’s face. That flew in the face of previous beliefs that memory for faces was somewhat diffuse throughout the brain and that the hippocampus might play a role in searching for pieces to assemble a ‘face’ much like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. A new study was recently released that provided some specifics related to facial encoding in a primate brain. That’s what it so exciting about brain-function research—new information is released quite regularly! More tomorrow.

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