Cited by 1,988Face Recognition and PerceptionVisual perception and processing mechanismsMemory and Neural Mechanisms

Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain

Open access
Quiroga, R. Quian, Reddy, L., Kreiman, G., Koch, C., Fried, I.·2005·Nature

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 unclear. 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 angle. We have previously shown that neurons in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) fire selectively to images of faces, animals, objects or scenes. 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.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/nature03687

Cites

31 of 31 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Human concept cells seem to encode a stable representation of a specific person or landmark, regardless of size or viewing angle, providing sparse codes for visually invariant abstractions related to personal events.

    “Human 'concept cells' seem to encode a stable representation of a specific person or landmark, regardless of size or viewing angle 104,105 , providing sparse codes [G] for visually invariant abstractions related to personal events 106 .”

    From From cognitive maps to spatial schemas (2023) · cites this paper as [104]

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Quiroga, R. Q., Reddy, L., Kreiman, G., Koch, C., & Fried, I.
Affiliations
  • California Institute of Technology (US)
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
  • University of California, Los Angeles (US)
Corresponding author
Quiroga, R. Quian
Venue
Nature
Published
2005-06
Volume
435
Issue
7045
Pages
1102-1107
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
OpenAlex
W2101295242
Cited by
1,988
References
31
Citations by year
2026: 72 · 2025: 125 · 2024: 92 · 2023: 111 · 2022: 126 · 2021: 97 · 2020: 105 · 2019: 186 · 2018: 92 · 2017: 80 · 2016: 82 · 2015: 85 · 2014: 82 · 2013: 89 · 2012: 89
FWCI
31.44
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
  • Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • Leicester Research Archive (University of Leicester) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
Keywords
single neuron responses, medial temporal lobe, face recognition (cognition), object recognition, drug-resistant epilepsy, depth electrodes, visual memory, sparse coding, long-term memory
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Adult, Brain, Face, Female, Hippocampus, Humans, Male, Memory, Middle Aged, Models, Neurological, Neurons, Pattern Recognition, Visual, ROC Curve, Substrate Specificity, Temporal Lobe

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review