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The Department of Psychology is delighted to announce the next online talk of the Mind Meeting Seminar Series.

On Thursday 4th November, 5 pm CET, Professor Itzhak Fried (University of California, USA) will give a talk entitled “Concept cells in the human medial temporal lobe”.

When: Thursday 4th November,  05:00 – 06:30 pm (CET)

The talk will take place virtually via Zoom. Please contact us at psy-office@cbs.mpg.de if you are interested in taking part.

Abstract

The medial temporal lobe is critical for the transformation of external objects into mental representations that can be later available for further elaboration and conscious retrieval. These mental representations can be studied at the single neuron level in rare neurosurgical settings when patients who can declare their percepts, memories and volitions, are implanted with intracranial electrodes for clinical reasons and are monitored for several days. I will discuss a unique subset of cells in hippocampus, entorhinal cortex and amygdala exhibiting multimodal invariance, enabling transcendence and abstraction of sensory input. These cells operate on a neural code which is sparse, highly associative and dynamic, relatively late (around 350 msec), evident during conscious perception and replayed during imagery and free spontaneous recall. Modulation of the code by internal volitional signals as well as by external electric stimulation will be discussed.