Researchers have gotten an amazingly close look at the human
brain’s methods of short-term memory formation and recollection.
A new study has examined the activity of individual brain cells,
and found that the same neurons that fire when a person gets
their first look at something fire again when they recall it.
Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles,
(U.C.L.A.) showed 13 volunteers—epilepsy patients with
therapeutic electrodes implanted in their brains—several five-
to 10-second clips from videos such as The Simpsons. The
researchers found that a small sample comprising some 50 neurons
in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex (memory centers in the
brain) fired in distinctive repeatable patterns that differed
for each clip [Scientific American]. A few minutes later, when
researchers asked the volunteers to think back to the film clips
and say what came to mind, the neurons fired in the same
distinct patterns when they mentioned each clip. In fact, the
neurons that had initially responded to