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ABSTRACT It takes a fraction of a second to recognize a person or an object even when seen under strikingly different conditions. How such a robust, high-level representation is achieved by
neurons in the human brain is still unclear1,2,3,4,5,6. In monkeys, neurons in the upper stages of the ventral visual pathway respond to complex images such as faces and objects and show
some degree of invariance to metric properties such as the stimulus size, position and viewing angle2,4,7,8,9,10,11,12. We have previously shown that neurons in the human medial temporal
lobe (MTL) fire selectively to images of faces, animals, objects or scenes13,14. Here we report on a remarkable subset of MTL neurons that are selectively activated by strikingly different
pictures of given individuals, landmarks or objects and in some cases even by letter strings with their names. These results suggest an invariant, sparse and explicit code, which might be
important in the transformation of complex visual percepts into long-term and more abstract memories. Access through your institution Buy or subscribe This is a preview of subscription
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ACCESS OPTIONS: * Log in * Learn about institutional subscriptions * Read our FAQs * Contact customer support SIMILAR CONTENT BEING VIEWED BY OTHERS A NEURONAL CODE FOR OBJECT REPRESENTATION
AND MEMORY IN THE HUMAN AMYGDALA AND HIPPOCAMPUS Article Open access 10 February 2025 A MAP OF OBJECT SPACE IN PRIMATE INFEROTEMPORAL CORTEX Article 03 June 2020 FEATURE-SELECTIVE RESPONSES
IN MACAQUE VISUAL CORTEX FOLLOW EYE MOVEMENTS DURING NATURAL VISION Article Open access 29 April 2024 REFERENCES * Barlow, H. Single units and sensation: a neuron doctrine for perception.
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We thank all patients for their participation; P. Sinha for drawing some faces; colleagues for providing pictures; I. Wainwright for administrative assistance; and E. Behnke, T. Fields, E.
Ho, E. Isham, A. Kraskov, P. Steinmetz, I. Viskontas and C. Wilson for technical assistance. This work was supported by grants from the NINDS, NIMH, NSF, DARPA, the Office of Naval Research,
the W.M. Keck Foundation Fund for Discovery in Basic Medical Research, a Whiteman fellowship (to G.K.), the Gordon Moore Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, and the Swartz Foundation for
Computational Neuroscience. AUTHOR INFORMATION Author notes * R. Quian Quiroga Present address: Department of Engineering, University of Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS *
Computation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, 91125, USA R. Quian Quiroga, L. Reddy & C. Koch * Division of Neurosurgery and Neuropsychiatric
Institute, University of California, (UCLA), Los Angeles, California, 90095, USA R. Quian Quiroga & I. Fried * Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02142, USA G. Kreiman * Functional Neurosurgery Unit, Tel-Aviv Medical Center and Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, 69978, Israel I. Fried
Authors * R. Quian Quiroga View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * L. Reddy View author publications You can also search for this author
inPubMed Google Scholar * G. Kreiman View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * C. Koch View author publications You can also search for this
author inPubMed Google Scholar * I. Fried View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to R. Quian Quiroga. ETHICS
DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS Reprints and permissions information is available at npg.nature.com/reprintsandpermissions. The authors declare no competing financial interests.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES This contains Supplementary Methods and Legends to accompany Supplementary Figures S1-11. (PDF 4435 kb) RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and
permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Quiroga, R., Reddy, L., Kreiman, G. _et al._ Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain. _Nature_ 435, 1102–1107
(2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03687 Download citation * Received: 01 December 2004 * Accepted: 03 February 2005 * Issue Date: 23 June 2005 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03687
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