It’s hard to pin down exactly what makes us remember things. When you see an image, what makes you decide you’ve seen it before? A new study has tackled this question, identifying a group of neurons that participate in the process of identifying images as familiar.
While this may seem counterintuitive—it probably feels like you either recognize something automatically or you don’t—your brain makes that determination using different aspects of your memory. “Determining whether a stimulus is novel or familiar is a complex decision involving the comparison of sensory information with internal variables,” the authors explain in their paper.
Am I sure I’ve seen this before...?
When your brain makes a decision, it's often accompanied by an assessment of how accurate that decision is. Was I right to buy that car? My brain would consider a number of factors—the driving experience, the gas mileage, and so on—before concluding it’s pretty likely I’m making the right decision. (Just an example; alas, there’s no shiny new car for my brain to assess). These confidence values are an essential part of the decision-making process, at least for humans, as it helps us navigate our complex environment.
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