(October 27, 2010) Five
years ago, neuroscientist Christof Koch of the California Institute of
Technology (Caltech), neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried of UCLA, and their colleagues
discovered that a single neuron in the human brain can function much like a
sophisticated computer and recognize people, landmarks, and objects, suggesting
that a consistent and explicit code may help transform complex visual
representations into long-term and more abstract memories.
Now Koch and Fried, along with former Caltech graduate student
and current postdoctoral fellow Moran Cerf, have found that individuals can
exert conscious control over the firing of these single neurons—despite the
neurons' location in an area of the brain previously thought inaccessible to
conscious control—and, in doing so, manipulate the behavior of an image on a
computer screen.