grandmother cell
n.— «The Grandmother cell.…Should one suppose that the cellular abstraction process goes so far that there exists for every meaningful structure of whose specific recognition a person is capable (for example, “my grandmother”) at least one particular nerve cell in the brain that responds if and only if the light and dark pattern from which that structure is abstracted appears in its visual space…?» —“Limits to the Scientific Understanding of Man” by Gunther S. Stent Science Mar. 21, 1975. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...