Named after Jennifer Aniston, from a 2005 study which identified a neuron firing to photographs showing the actress.[1]
Jennifer Aniston neuron (plural Jennifer Aniston neurons)
- (informal) Synonym of grandmother cell
2012, Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, Borges and Memory: Encounters with the Human Brain, MIT Press, →ISBN, page 173:In fact, the Jennifer Aniston neuron also responded to Lisa Kudrow, another star of Friends (the television series that made them both famous), in an experiment carried out the next day.
2014, John Medina, Brain Rules, updated and expanded edition, Pear Press, →ISBN, page 94:A Jennifer Aniston neuron? How could this be? Surely nothing in our evolutionary history suggests that Jennifer Aniston is a permanent denizen of our brain wiring.
- ^ R. Quian Quiroga, L. Reddy, G. Kreiman, C. Koch, I. Fried (2005-06) “Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain”, in Nature[1], volume 435, number 7045, →DOI, →ISSN, pages 1102–1107