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<p class="MsoNormal">Ann-Sophie Barwich recently published an article in <i>Frontiers in Neuroscience</i> titled “<b><span style="background:white">The Value of Failure in Science: The Story of Grandmother Cells in Neuroscience</span></b>”
<span style="color:#1F497D">(</span><a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.01121/full">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.01121/full</a>) where she argues for the need for failure analysis in science and, in the
context of neuroscience, analyzed the grandmother cell concept as a failed one. Although I was one of the reviewers who endorsed the article for publication (publication of alternative viewpoints is essential in science), I felt that Barwich’s arguments against
grandmother cells were deeply flawed. I point out these flaws in a Commentary in
<i>Frontiers in Neuroscience</i>: “<b><span style="background:white">Commentary: The Value of Failure in Science: The Story of Grandmother Cells in Neuroscience</span></b>:”
<a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2020.00059/full">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2020.00059/full</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I think Reddy and Thorpe’s 2014 article clears the confusion about concept cells. With Reddy and Thorpe’s characterization of concept cells, one would find no difference between concept cells and grandmother cells. And that’s essentially
what I have done in the Commentary – show that concept cells and grandmother cells have identical properties. I also point out in the Commentary that it’s a false claim by Barwich (and in other prior articles that Barwich references) that concept cells can
be part of a sparse population coding scheme. Given that concept cells have “meaning” on a stand-alone basis, they can’t be part of any population coding scheme. And it’s also a false claim in Barwich that grandmother cells do not use associative learning,
because grandmother cells have always been characterized as “<i>multimodal</i>” going all the way back to Gross (2002). In addition, the neurophysiological evidence on multisensory neurons clearly point to a single-cell based abstract cognitive system in the
brain<span style="color:#1F497D">,</span> as claimed by Roy (2017). <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Overall, concept cell findings <span style="background:white">
confirm the prediction of </span><a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2020.00059/full#B1"><span style="color:windowtext;text-decoration:none">Barlow (2009)</span></a><span style="background:white"> that grandmother cells exist and “</span><i>can
now be recorded from and studied reliably</i><span style="background:white">.”</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">YOU CAN EMAIL ME IF YOU WANT TO JOIN A DISCUSSION GROUP ON THIS TOPIC.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background:white">Barlow, H. B. (2009). “Grandmother cells, symmetry, and invariance: how the term arose and what the facts suggest,” in
</span><i>The Cognitive Neurosciences, 4th Edn.</i><span style="background:white">, ed M. Gazzaniga (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 309–320.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background:white">Reddy, L., and Thorpe, S. J. (2014). Concept cells through associative learning of high-level representations.
</span><i>Neuron</i><span style="background:white"> 84, 248–251. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2014.10.004<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background:white">Roy, A. (2017). The theory of localist representation and of a purely abstract cognitive system: the evidence from cortical columns, category cells, and multisensory neurons. <i>Front. Psychol.</i> 8:186.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00186<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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