Such cells, together with their sisters—for there are probably
thousands of such cells in the medial temporal lobe for any one
idea—encode a concept, such as Jennifer Aniston, no matter
whether the patient sees or hears her name or looks at her
picture. Think of them as the cellular substrate of the Platonic
ideal of Jennifer Aniston. Whether the actress is sitting or
running, whether her hair is up or down, as long as the patient
recognizes Jennifer Aniston, those neurons are active. Nobody is
born with cells selective for Jennifer Aniston. Like a sculptor
patiently releasing a Venus de Milo or Pietà out of blocks of
marble, the learning algorithms of the brain sculpt the synaptic
fields in which concept neurons are embedded. Every time you
encounter a particular person or object, a similar pattern of
spiking neurons is generated in higher-order cortical regions.
The networks in the medial temporal lobe recognize such
repeating patterns and dedicate specific neurons to them. You
have concept neurons that enc