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Halle Berry? Jennifer Aniston? Everybody knows them. And now a surprising study finds that even individual cells in your brain act as if they recognize them.
The work could help shed light on how the brain stores information, an expert said.
When scientists sampled brain cell activity in people who were scrutinizing dozens of pictures, they found some individual cells that reacted to a particular celebrity, landmark, animal or object.
In one case, a single cell was activated by different photos of Berry, including some in her "Catwoman" costume, a drawing of her and even the words, "Halle Berry."
The findings appear in a part of the brain that transforms what people perceive into what they'll eventually remember, said Dr. Itzhak Fried of the University of California, Los Angeles, a senior investigator on the project.
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Found this very interesting.
Halle Berry? Jennifer Aniston? Everybody knows them. And now a surprising study finds that even individual cells in your brain act as if they recognize them.
The work could help shed light on how the brain stores information, an expert said.
When scientists sampled brain cell activity in people who were scrutinizing dozens of pictures, they found some individual cells that reacted to a particular celebrity, landmark, animal or object.
In one case, a single cell was activated by different photos of Berry, including some in her "Catwoman" costume, a drawing of her and even the words, "Halle Berry."
The findings appear in a part of the brain that transforms what people perceive into what they'll eventually remember, said Dr. Itzhak Fried of the University of California, Los Angeles, a senior investigator on the project.
...
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Found this very interesting.
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Re: Brain Cells 'Recognize' Famous People
Thu, June 23, 2005 - 3:43 PMSo... weas I born with some kind of Halle Berry module that she activates, or is this an adaptive thing?
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Re: Brain Cells 'Recognize' Famous People
Thu, June 23, 2005 - 4:38 PMI also find this and a whale of a body of research on neuroimaging interesting , albeit a bit redundant and misleading.
Let me try to explain, suppose you were studying a car, and found out that after breaking the thing apart it didn't work, and stopped moving. ( we simply can't take apart the brain for the same reasons). So alas, you develop a gizmo that detects vibration and heat as to study this mysterious moving object without interfering with its function, you also test broken cars to see what parts are either not shaking/hot or over heating trembling etc etc.
So after some time testing, you come up with the following finding, every time a car behaves in such and such way, x,y and z parts of the engine become hot and vibrate... very interesting.
There is indeed a relationship, and from a mechanic/starting point of view this knowledge is really helpful in fixing and diagnosing the car. The analogy here would be epileptic treatment trough the removal of certain parts of the brain.
Finishing my analogy knowing where things shake and get hot in this theoretical car's engine, will sadly not explain internal combustion,( intelligence) how to improve your miles per gallon (where are my keys anyway) or how to easily find a parking spot. (world peace).
But I might be wrong.
An interesting read nontheless.
