Recording from individual neurons in the human brain: Methodologies and experiments
A
lot of our understanding about brain functioning comes from in vivo
studies of the electrical activity of individual neurons in animal
brains. In many cases, recordings are performed extracellularly using
microwires. Under exceptional circumstances, epilepsy patients are
implanted with intracranial electrodes to identify the seizure focus
for potential resective surgery. These recordings provide a unique
opportunity to study directly the role of different brain areas by
measuring the correlation between single-cell activity and the behavior
of conscious human subjects carrying out visual perception tasks.
In this talk I will describe some of the current research lines in our laboratory, including:
i) The development of quantitative tools to analyze single-cell recordings.
ii)
What we have learned from the "Jennifer Aniston" neurons (neurons
firing selectively to the identity of a given individual) that were
recently found in our lab in collaboration with UCLA Medical Center and Caltech.