Celebrity watch: just one brain cell required

It takes one brain cell to recognise a Hollywood celebrity, according to a study into how the mind recalls a familiar face. Faces of stars such as Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry and Brad Pitt each stimulate a nerve cell in the brain that seems to recognise that face alone.

It takes one brain cell to recognise a Hollywood celebrity, according to a study into how the mind recalls a familiar face. Faces of stars such as Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry and Brad Pitt each stimulate a nerve cell in the brain that seems to recognise that face alone.

The findings suggest that individual brain cells, rather than being mere electronic relays for signals, are miniature computers in their own right.

Instead of brain cells acting as a network of individual units, scientists may revitalise an older theory suggesting a separate cell is responsible for recognising a familiar face.

The scientists who published the research in the journal Nature today said that along with the old idea of a "grandmother cell" responsible for recognising your grandmother, there may be an entire population of cells for recognising other people. Itzhak Fried, professor of neurosurgery at the University of California at Los Angeles, said: "This new understanding of individual neurons as thinking cells is an important step toward cracking the brain's cognition code."

The study was carried out on eight epilepsy patients being treated with the help of micro-electrodes implanted into their brains. As they were shown images of famous people and landmarks, the scientists recorded electrical activity in individual brain cells or "units". For example, the scientists said, in one patient a single brain cell responded to different pictures of Jennifer Aniston, yet the same cell did not respond to her when she appeared with her former husband Brad Pitt.

Christof Koch, the professor of computation and neural systems at the California Institute of Technology, said: "Our findings fly in the face of conventional thinking about how brain cells function ... We are finding that neurons are able to function more like a sophisticated computer."