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Concept cells: the building blocks of declarative memory functions
Abstract
Intracranial recordings in subjects suffering from intractable epilepsy - made during their evaluation for an eventual surgical removal of the epileptic focus - have allowed the extraordinary opportunity to study the firing of multiple single neurons in awake and behaving human subjects. These studies have shown that neurons in the human medial temporal lobe respond in a remarkably selective and abstract manner to particular persons or objects, such as Jennifer Aniston, Luke Skywalker or the Tower of Pisa. These neurons have been named 'Jennifer Aniston neurons' or, more recently, 'concept cells'. I argue that the sparse, explicit and abstract representation of these neurons is crucial for memory functions, such as the creation of associations and the transition between related concepts that leads to episodic memories and the flow of consciousness.
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“We propose that neonatal bulbar neurogenesis may represent an early developmental mechanism contributing to the formation of such representations.”
From Positive early-life olfactory memory is rooted in the olfactory bulb and triggers large-scale changes beyond the olfactory system (2026) · cites this paper as [66]
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“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 [106]
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Unified selective sorting approach to analyse multi-electrode extracellular data
Veerabhadrappa, R., Lim, C. P., Nguyen, T. T., Berk, M., Tye, S. J., Monaghan, P., Nahavandi, S., & Bhatti, A. (2016) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/srep28533 · Cited by 8
Kashyap, R., Bhattacharjee, S., Sommer, W., & Zhou, C. (2018) · European Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1111/ejn.14303 · Cited by 8
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BackgroundEmbedding emotion concepts in cognitive maps
Ma, Y., Vafaie, N., & Kragel, P. A. (2025) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106089 · Cited by 7
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Roy, A. (2014) · Cognitive Computation · doi:10.1007/s12559-014-9307-7 · Cited by 8
“A Hebbian Cell Assembly Implementation of Semantic Knowledge Using Category and Concept Cells Quian Quiroga [2] presents a model where abstract concept cells are part of Hebbian cell assemblies.”
BackgroundInfluentialSelf-organization of network dynamics into local quantized states
Nicolaides, C., Juanes, R., & Cueto‐Felgueroso, L. (2016) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/srep21360 · Cited by 8
Neuronal mechanisms for sequential activation of memory items: Dynamics and reliability
Ersöz, E. K., Aguilar, C., Chossat, P., Крупа, М. М., & Lavigne, F. (2020) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0231165 · Cited by 8
“Indeed, individual neurons respond to several different stimuli [43–45] and two populations of neurons coding for two items can share some active neurons [46, 47].”
BackgroundIn Situ Representations and Access Consciousness in Neural Blackboard or Workspace Architectures
van der Velde, F. (2018) · Frontiers in Robotics and AI · doi:10.3389/frobt.2018.00032 · Cited by 8
“Quian Quiroga, R. (2012). Concept cells: the building blocks of declarative”
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Haga, T., Oseki, Y., & Fukai, T. (2025) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2413449122 · Cited by 9
Rolls, E. T. (2025) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106492 · Cited by 8
“…sound of the person ’ s voice, the written name of the person or object, to places in which they have been seen, and even to their friends (Quian Quiroga et al., 2005; Quian Quiroga, 2012, 2013; Ison et al., 2015; Rey et al., 2015; De Falco et al., 2016; Bausch et al., 2021; Mackay et al., 2024).”
Shared neural geometries for bilingual semantic representations in human hippocampal neurons
Yan, X., Chavez, A. G., Franch, M. C., Katlowitz, K. A., Gautam, I., Kim, B., Krishna, A., Shrivastava, A., Arsdel, K. V., Belanger, J. L., et al. (2026) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2026.05.020 · Cited by 8
Reconstructing Spatiotemporal Trajectories of Visual Object Memories in the Human Brain
Lifanov, J., Griffiths, B., Domingo, J. L., Ferreira, C. S., Wilson, M., Mayhew, S. D., Charest, I., & Wimber, M. (2024) · eNeuro · doi:10.1523/eneuro.0091-24.2024 · Cited by 13
“After ∼ 300 ms, information reaches the hippocampus, where concept cells represent objects as highly abstract, perceptually invariant concepts (Quiroga, 2012).”
BackgroundQuiroga, R. Q. (2019) · Physics of Life Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2019.02.014 · Cited by 7
Self-citationThe Mind-Brain Relationship as a Mathematical Problem
Ascoli, G. A. (2013) · ISRN Neuroscience · doi:10.1155/2013/261364 · Cited by 7
“Proposals range from involvement of broadly distributed oscillatory rhythms ([30]; see, however, [31]) to activation of highly specific “concept neurons” [32].”
BackgroundAdvanced Models of Cortical Dynamics in Perception
Freeman, W. J., Kozma, R., Li, G., Quiroga, R. Q., Vitiello, G., & Zhang, T. (2014) · Advances in cognitive neurodynamics · doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9548-7_17 · Cited by 7
“The operation of Hebbian assemblies at this level is revealed by the properties of concept cells [12, 13] in the medial temporal lobe that manifest crossmodal generalization and abstraction.”
BackgroundSelf-citationHow Are Memories Stored in the Human Hippocampus?
Quiroga, R. Q. (2021) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2021.03.006 · Cited by 7
“neurons, versus <10% reported in similar studies [11]), with responses barely crossing or not crossing a”
ResultSelf-citationCognition through internal models: Mirror neurons as one manifestation of a broader mechanismPreprint
Aflalo, T., Chivukula, S., Zhang, C. Y., Rosario, E. R., Pouratian, N., & Andersen, R. A. (2022) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.1101/2022.09.06.506071 · Cited by 7
“For example, the concept of "Star Wars" may be formed by an ensemble of cells encoding subconcepts such as "Luke Skywalker," "Darth Vader," etc (46).”
BackgroundNeuronal population representation of human emotional memory
Fetterhoff, D., Costa, M., Hellerstedt, R., Johannessen, R., Imbach, L., Sarnthein, J., & Strange, B. A. (2024) · Cell Reports · doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114071 · Cited by 6
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“ITAs concentrate their response into a single neuron, which seems to be a common practice in higher level brains [4]-[5].”
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“For example, Quiroga and colleagues have probably gone further than most in providing corroborating evidence for localist representation. In Quiroga, Reddy, Kreiman, Koch, and Fried (2005), for example, they measured from cells in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) of awake human subjects.”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialZhao, F., & Behnisch, T. (2023) · Biomedicines · doi:10.3390/biomedicines11071996 · Cited by 6
The transparency of mental vehicles
Murez, M. (2023) · Noûs · doi:10.1111/nous.12483 · Cited by 6
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Mainetti, M., & Ascoli, G. A. (2015) · PLoS Computational Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004155 · Cited by 5
“Theories and experiments estimate that at least 50–200 cells take part in encoding each unit of thought [25, 26, 27].”
BackgroundPerception Coordination Network: A Neuro Framework for Multimodal Concept Acquisition and Binding
Xing, Y., Shi, X., Shen, F., Zhao, J., Pan, J., & Tan, A. (2018) · IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems · doi:10.1109/tnnls.2018.2861680 · Cited by 6
“The pathways are summarized and deduced from [2]– [18].”
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Self-organization of network dynamics into local quantized states
Nicolaides, C., Juanes, R., & Cueto‐Felgueroso, L. (2015) · Hispana · Cited by 6
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Fang, H., & Zeng, Y. (2021) · International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) · doi:10.1109/ijcnn52387.2021.9534102 · Cited by 6
“It is reliable to assume that population of neurons can encode different concepts, entities even relations [19] [21] [23] [22].”
BackgroundMethodTransfer of object shape knowledge across visual and haptic modalities
Erdogan, G., Yildirim, I., & Jacobs, R. A. (2014) · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · doi:10.13140/2.1.1513.9206 · Cited by 6
The Tensor Memory HypothesisPreprint
Volker Tresp, C., & Ma, Y. (2017) · arXiv (Cornell University) · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1708.02918 · Cited by 6
“In that area, [44] identified concept cells with focussed responses to individuals like the actresses Jennifer Aniston and Halle Berry.”
BackgroundA human single-neuron dataset for object recognition
Cao, R., Brunner, P., Brandmeir, N. J., Willie, J. T., & Wang, S. (2025) · Scientific Data · doi:10.1038/s41597-024-04265-1 · Cited by 7
“These category-selective may form highly selective (sparse) representations of objects 5–8 and are regarded as the building blocks of declarative memory 7–10 .”
Towards precise synthetic neural codes: high-dimensional stimulation with flexible electrodes
Kim, R., Liu, Y., Zhang, J., Xie, C., & Luan, L. (2025) · npj Flexible Electronics · doi:10.1038/s41528-025-00447-y · Cited by 7
“However, memories are encoded through distributed, non-topographic patterns across the medial temporal lobe, including the hippocampus, which makes targeted stimulation more dif fi cult 133 .”
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Rogala, J., Bajno, B., & Wróbel, A. (2020) · PsyCh Journal · doi:10.1002/pchj.374 · Cited by 5
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BackgroundTask Modulation of Single-Neuron Activity in the Human Amygdala and Hippocampus
Cao, R., Todorov, A., Brandmeir, N. J., & Wang, S. (2021) · eNeuro · doi:10.1523/eneuro.0398-21.2021 · Cited by 6
“…argues for two prominent properties: (1) the representation of identities is invariant to visual features (Quian Quiroga et al., 2005; Quian Quiroga, 2012); and (2) identity neurons encode conceptually related (e.g., Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton) but not visually related identities (De…”
BackgroundHauk, O., Jackson, R. L., & Rahimi, S. V. (2023) · Language Cognition and Neuroscience · doi:10.1080/23273798.2023.2226268 · Cited by 5
“While for concepts such as famous personalities sparse representations have been suggested (Quiroga, 2012), semantic representations are generally assumed to be widely distributed, possibly including multimodal brain areas (Binder & Desai, 2011; Lambon Ralph et al., 2017; Pulvermuller, 2013).”
What Is the Contribution of iEEG as Compared to Other Methods to Cognitive Neuroscience?
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“However, these estimates for γ are based on indirect evidence, including the number of hippocampal place cells active in each environment, and the number of concept cells active when presenting a concept, based on simultaneous single-and few-neuron recordings (Almeida et al., 2007; Quiroga, 2012).”
BackgroundLinking Neural and Symbolic Representation and Processing of Conceptual Structures
van der Velde, F., Forth, J., Nazareth, D. S., & Wiggins, G. A. (2017) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01297 · Cited by 5
“For example, neurons observed in the medial temporal cortex responded to a person whether the person or his or her name was presented (Quian Quiroga, 2012).”
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Basic Concepts for Spatial Analysis
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Self-citationRolls, E. T. (2016) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-809324-5.06860-7 · Cited by 5
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“although the findings are generally taken in support of sparse distributed representations (Quiroga, 2012; Waydo, Kraskov, Quiroga, Fried, & Koch, 2006).”
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“In particular, researchers have reported 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 (Quiroga, 2012; Quiroga, Reddy, Kreiman, Koch, & Fried, 2005).”
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Karkowski, K., Kehl, M. S., Qin, Y., Darcher, A., Karkowski, P., Borger, V., Surges, R., Hebart, M. N., Reber, T. P., Dehaene, S., et al. (2025) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.1101/2025.10.21.682935 · Cited by 5
“These neurons, also known as concept cells, have been hypothesized to serve as building blocks for declarative memory by encoding the meaning of a concept 10 , a hypothesis only recently confirmed experimentally 11 .”
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“…lobe respond selectively to stimuli related to particular people or objects like Jennifer Aniston or the Tower of Pisa (Quiroga et al. 2005; Quiroga 2012), and groups of cells in superior temporal gyrus respond selectively to sounds associated with particular phonetic categories (Mesgarani…”
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“In general, a high degree of invariance is negatively correlated with the degree of selectivity [36,37,45], although another study has found neurons with strong invariance and strong selectivity together [46].”
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Thorpe, L. (2021) · Journal of the American Philosophical Association · doi:10.1017/apa.2020.43 · Cited by 4
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Shoham, A., Broday-Dvir, R., Yaron, I., Yovel, G., & Malach, R. (2025) · Communications Biology · doi:10.1038/s42003-025-08497-8 · Cited by 5
“Particularlystrikingcasesarevisualactivationsfoundinthehippocampus associatedwithconceptualrepresentations 51,52 and visual activations in human high-order somatosensory cortex 53,54 .”
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Xing, Y., Sun, H., Feng, G., Shen, F., & Zhao, J. (2020) · IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems · doi:10.1109/tnnls.2020.3002556 · Cited by 4
“We also introduce many physiological research results to the model, e.g., for different types of neurons found in many physiological experiments, including the feature neurons [37], concept neurons [38], and association neurons [39], we design different computational models.”
MethodEfficient neural spike sorting using data subdivision and unification
Hassan, M. U., Veerabhadrappa, R., & Bhatti, A. (2021) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0245589 · Cited by 4
Concept Cells in the Human Brain
Quiroga, R. Q. (2014) · Advances in cognitive neurodynamics · doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9548-7_19 · Cited by 4
“The finding of concept cells firing to related concepts [5, 9, 14] is in line with the key role of associations in the formation of new declarative memories.”
BackgroundMethodResultSelf-citationStatistical Modelling of Artificial Neural Network for Sorting Temporally Synchronous Spikes
Veerabhadrappa, R., Bhatti, A., Lim, C. P., Nguyen, T. T., Tye, S. J., Monaghan, P., & Nahavandi, S. (2015) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-26555-1_30 · Cited by 4
Categorization in Intentional Theory of Concepts
Zaitsev, D. V., & Zaitseva, N. (2016) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-40663-3_53 · Cited by 4
A Mathematical Theory of Cortex-Receptor Artificial Extension
Xing, Y. (2020) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-020-57591-w · Cited by 4
Hippocampal activity in working memory tasks: sparse, yet relevant
Peters, J. C., & Reithler, J. (2022) · Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1080/17588928.2022.2131746 · Cited by 4
“For example, HPC contains neurons which selectively respond to highly familiar concepts (e.g., relatives, friends, or celebrities; Quiroga, 2012).”
BackgroundMental navigation and telekinesis with a hippocampal map-based brain-machine interfacePreprint
Lai, C., Tanaka, S., Harris, T. D., & Lee, A. K. (2023) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.1101/2023.04.07.536077 · Cited by 4
“5 to 5 × the standard deviation of the activity (Quiroga, 2012)).”
BackgroundInfluentialLearning of visual sequences by neurons in the human hippocampusPreprint
John, T. T., Zhou, Y., Aljishi, A., Rieck, B., Turk‐Browne, N. B., & Damisah, E. C. (2025) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.1101/2025.03.04.641300 · Cited by 5
A geometric foundation for word meaning in the brainPreprint
Zhu, H., Franch, M. C., Mickiewicz, E. A., Belanger, J. L., Cowan, R. L., Katlowitz, K. A., Chavez, A. G. L., Chericoni, A., Paulo, D. L., Yan, X., et al. (2026) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.64898/2026.01.28.702241 · Cited by 5
Computational single-neuron mechanisms of visual object coding in the human temporal lobe
Cao, R., Zhang, J., Zheng, J., Wang, Y., Brunner, P., Willie, J. T., & Wang, S. (2026) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-026-68954-8 · Cited by 7
“Incontrast,theMTL employs sparse coding, where only a small subset of neurons respond selectively to speci fi c object categories 23 – 26 , abstracting away lower-level visual details 25,26 .”
Influential20 years of concept cells: From invariant responses to a unique coding of human memory
Quiroga, R. Q. (2026) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2026.01.026 · Cited by 3
Self-citationThe Tensor Brain: A Unified Theory of Perception, Memory, and Semantic Decoding
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“Researchers have reported 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 (Quiroga, 2012; Quiroga, Reddy, Kreiman, Koch, & Fried, 2005).”
BackgroundPopulation encoding of observed and actual somatosensations in the human posterior parietal cortex
Chivukula, S., Aflalo, T., Zhang, C. Y., Rosario, E. R., Bari, A., Pouratian, N., & Andersen, R. A. (2024) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2316012121 · Cited by 8
“For example, the concept of “Star Wars” may be formed by an ensemble of cells encoding subconcepts such as “Luke Skywalker”, “Darth Vader”, etc ( 46 ).”
Hyper-speed meaning and form predictions: An EEG-based representational similarity analysis
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Hippocampo-neocortical interaction as compressive retrieval-augmented generation
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“This explains not only the presence of conceptual representations in the hippocampus 38 , but also the fact that memories are schematised from the time of encoding 56,57 .”
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Can a Hebbian-like learning rule be avoiding the curse of dimensionality in sparse distributed data?
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Two-population model for medial temporal lobe neurons: The vast majority are almost silent
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“This is the simplest version of the concept cell idea [29].”
InfluentialModeling of Brain-Like Concept Coding with Adulthood Neurogenesis in the Dentate Gyrus
Wang, Y., Gao, Y., Deng, Y., & Yang, L. (2019) · Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience · doi:10.1155/2019/2367075 · Cited by 3
“+e hippocampus is the core brain area responsible for concept coding [1, 2].”
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Neural evidence for recognition of naturalistic videos in monkey hippocampus
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The neuronal representation of information in the human brain
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“The dataset thus provides unique conditions for the analysis of, e.g., the ‘concept cells’ on the micro-scale of single unit LFP responses 18,19 , or specific memory traces on the macro-and/or micro-scale of ripple and other high-frequency oscillations 20–22 .”
Niediek, J., Reber, T. P., Bausch, M., Schwimmbeck, F., Gast, H., Coenen, V. A., Boström, J. P., Elger, C., & Mormann, F. (2026) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.64898/2026.01.10.698827 · Cited by 4
“Concept cells have been proposed to provide the “who”/“what” ingredient of mnemonic episodes 6 , which has recently been verified experimentally, and are complemented by location neurons in the parahippocampal cortex that provide the “where” aspect 59 .”
Metadata
- Authors
- Quiroga, R. Q.
- Affiliations
- University of Leicester (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Quiroga, Rodrigo Quian
- Venue
- Nature reviews. Neuroscience
- Published
- 2012-07-04
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 587-597
- ISSN
- 1471-003X (ISSN-L)
- 1471-0048
- OpenAlex
- W2040309074
- Cited by
- 472
- References
- 124
- Citations by year
- 2026: 39 · 2025: 50 · 2024: 26 · 2023: 36 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 38 · 2020: 39 · 2019: 59 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 30 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 33 · 2014: 30 · 2013: 16 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 2.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature reviews. Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Leicester Research Archive (University of Leicester) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural dynamics and brain function
- Keywords
- medial temporal lobe, declarative memory, episodic memory, single-unit recording, drug-resistant epilepsy, object recognition, person recognition, memory associations, stream of consciousness
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Concept Formation, Humans, Memory, Nerve Net, Neural Pathways, Temporal Lobe, Synaptic Potentials
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