Abstract
A grandmother cell is a neural or cognitive unit that selectively responds to just one particular physical object (one’s maternal grandmother, for example, or one’s own right hand, or one’s own car). Grandmother cells should be distinguished from gnostic units, which are neural or cognitive units that respond selectively to all members of categories of physical objects (all elderly ladies, for example, or all hands, or all cars). Both grandmother cells and gnostic units count as local representations, but not all local representations count as grandmother cells.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 350-358 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Language, Cognition and Neuroscience |
Volume | 32 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 16 Mar 2017 |
Keywords
- distributed representation
- gnostic unit
- Grandmother cell
- local representation
- visual object recognition