# Cedars-Sinai: amygdala category neurons' firing predicts which images humans later remember

- Published: 2026-11-13 13:53 UTC
- Section: Life & Health › Neurotechnology
- Tags: amygdala and memory, episodic memory encoding, category-selective neurons, single-neuron recordings, spike-field coherence, hippocampus, Cedars-Sinai, Nature Neuroscience, human brain recordings
- URL: https://realtech.media/news/rt-d41b3158607c38e226f44524_cedars_sinai_amygdala/

**Single-neuron recordings in neurosurgical patients show that amygdala activity at first viewing of an image predicts whether it is later remembered; two datasets.**

![Cedars-Sinai: amygdala category neurons' firing predicts which images humans later remember](https://realtech.media/media/2026/11/5ae32ddfe53b1d1b.jpg)
*Christinecooch, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0*

Researchers recording single-neuron activity in the human brain report that the firing of category-selective neurons in the amygdala during the first viewing of an image predicts whether the image will later be remembered, according to a paper on nature.com [1]. The work, from a Cedars-Sinai team and published in Nature Neuroscience, used recordings from neurosurgical patients: 42 patients and 49 sessions in the first task [1]. The effect was tested in two separate datasets, which allowed the authors to assess its robustness [1].

## How the experiment was run

Patients performed a working memory task followed by a recognition test. In each of 140 trials they viewed one or three new pictures and, after a maintenance period, said whether a probe picture matched one of them [1]. Each image belonged to one of five categories: people, food, animals, cars and landscapes [1].

After a delay of 10–30 minutes, patients were shown 400 images: 200 from the earlier task and 200 never shown before. For each image they indicated whether it was "old" or "new" and how sure they were [1]. Neuron activity at encoding was then compared between items later remembered and items later forgotten [1].

## What the amygdala neurons showed

Category-selective amygdala neurons fired more during encoding of later remembered items than of later forgotten ones [1]. The effect was predictive of the episodic aspect of the memory and was restricted to each cell's preferred category [1]. It emerged earlier and was stronger in the amygdala than in the hippocampus, and did not depend on stimulus valence or arousal [1].

Successful memory formation was accompanied by enhanced spike-field coherence between the activity of amygdala category cells and hippocampal field potentials [1]. According to the authors, this indicates that stimulus-specific recruitment of the amygdala, rather than a general change in its activity, predicts memory formation [1].

The amygdala is classically associated with emotional events. Earlier studies, cited in the paper, found that amygdala stimulation enhances memory for a wide range of neutral stimuli without inducing emotional responses [1]. The authors suggest category cells in the right amygdala as a target for interventions in disorders affecting episodic memory in humans [1]. Ueli Rutishauser said the activity of specific neuron types predicts, while a person sees an image for the first time, whether it will later be remembered.

## Sources

1. [nature.com](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02493-9)
2. [SciTechDaily](https://scitechdaily.com/a-tiny-region-deep-inside-your-brain-helps-decide-what-you-remember)

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Source: RealTech, realtech.media — https://realtech.media/news/rt-d41b3158607c38e226f44524_cedars_sinai_amygdala/