Do different languages light up different neurons for the same concept ? Do clusters of neurons correspond to a certain thought?
In: 183
Short answer: no and no.
Silly answer: if you *reaalllllyyyy* stretch out what “having a neuron that corresponds to a thought” could possibly to mean, all the way to the point of it not meaning much at all, then yes, you have specific neurons that recognize your [grandmother and Jennifer Aniston](https://www.nature.com/articles/news050620-7) and everyone else you’ve ever met.
Real answer: your question is sort of like asking if there’s a single transistor in your playstation that corresponds to donkey kong’s face. No, that’s not how computers work: transistors are just little logic gates that turn on and off. You get donkey kongs face because hundreds of thousands of transistors are all in a particular on/off position at a given time. Neural processing is similar – it’s a matter of systems, not specific neurons. But that being said, it appears to be pretty sure at this point that there are systems that handle specific kinds of thinking. They may not always be in the same part brain, so it’s better to think of them as networks. But, there’s evidence of a [“face recognizing” network](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07668-4) (we can even completely reconstruct the face you’re looking at from just neural firings), a [“reasoning about other people’s beliefs, intentions, and desires” network](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03399-2), [a language network](https://twitter.com/ev_fedorenko/status/1420650532998369282?lang=en), and others. I don’t know a ton about things that happen at the level of neurons – [orientation in space](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGxVfKJqX5E) is one (click the link for a video from the 50s of some people listening to neurons fire for the first time) – but most higher order thinking happens at the network level.
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