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Memories of items and their contexts are encoded by separate groups of human brain cells

Human memory often needs to link specific items to the situation in which they feature. Brain recordings reveal that two distinct groups of neurons respond to stimuli and contextual information. These groups then cooperate to form flexible memories, rather than individual neurons encoding both signal types.

This is a summary of: Bausch, M. et al. Distinct neuronal populations in the human brain combine content and context. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09910-2 (2026).

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00016-x

‘Expert opinion’ is published under a CC BY 4.0 licence; Figure 1 is published under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence.

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