Concept and location neurons in the human brain provide the ‘what’ and ‘where’ in memory formation

Sina Mackay, Thomas P. Reber, Marcel Bausch, Jan Boström, Christian E. Elger and Florian Mormann ()
Additional contact information
Sina Mackay: University Hospital Bonn
Thomas P. Reber: University Hospital Bonn
Marcel Bausch: University Hospital Bonn
Jan Boström: University Hospital Bonn
Christian E. Elger: University Hospital Bonn
Florian Mormann: University Hospital Bonn

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Our brains create new memories by capturing the ‘who/what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ of everyday experiences. On a neuronal level, mechanisms facilitating a successful transfer into episodic memory are still unclear. We investigated this by measuring single neuron activity in the human medial temporal lobe during encoding of item-location associations. While previous research has found predictive effects in population activity in human MTL structures, we could attribute such effects to two specialized sub-groups of neurons: concept cells in the hippocampus, amygdala and entorhinal cortex (EC), and a second group of parahippocampal location-selective neurons. In both item- and location-selective populations, firing rates were significantly higher during successfully encoded trials. These findings are in line with theories of hippocampal indexing, since selective index neurons may act as pointers to neocortical representations. Overall, activation of distinct populations of neurons could directly support the connection of the ‘what’ and ‘where’ of episodic memory.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52295-5 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-52295-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-52295-5

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().