Pronouns reactivate conceptual representations in human hippocampal neurons

• DOI: 10.1126/science.adr2813
• Publication Date: 2024-09-26T18:00:52Z
• Authors: D. E. Dijksterhuis; M. W. Self; J. K. Possel; J. C. Peters; E. C. W. van Stra...; S. Idema; J. C. Baaijen; S. M. A. van der ...; E. J. Aarnoutse; N. C. E. van Klink; P. van Eijsden; S. Hanslmayr; R. Chelvarajah; F. Roux; L. D. Kolibius; V. Sawlani; D. T. Rollings; S. Dehaene; P. R. Roelfsema
• Keywords: Neurons; Male; Adult; Hippocampus/physiology cytology; Hippocampus; Memory/physiology; Semantics; Reading; Memory; Humans; Female; General; Hippocampus/physiology; Comprehension; Neurons/physiology; Language

During discourse comprehension, every new word adds to an evolving representation of meaning that accumulates over consecutive sentences and constrains the next words. To minimize repetition utterance length, languages use pronouns, like "she," refer nouns phrases were previously introduced. It has been suggested language comprehension requires pronouns activate same neuronal representations as themselves. We recorded from individual neurons in human hippocampus during a reading task. Cells selective particular noun later reactivated by cells' preferred noun. These results imply concept cells contribute rapid dynamic semantic memory network is recruited comprehension.