Grandmother cell

The grandmother cell is a hypothetical neuron that represents a complex but specific concept or object. It activates when a person "sees, hears, or otherwise sensibly discriminates" a specific entity, such as his or her grandmother. The term was in use at least as early as 1966 amongst staff and students in the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, England. A similar concept, that of the gnostic neuron, was proposed two years later by Jerzy Konorski.