Evidently, what we perceive as "paying attention" to something originates, at the cellular level, in the synchronized firing of a group of neurons, whose rhythmic electrical activity rises above the background chatter of the vast neuronal crowd.
When you learn something new, a group of neurons activate in a part of the brain called the hippocampus.
But when a seizure begins, "a whole group of neurons all of a sudden do something together," firing in a kind of sporadic synchrony, he said.
It's been pioneered in Parkinson's disease, where a small group of neurons buried deep inside the brain starts to die and the electrodes take over their job.
The innermost group of neurons is called the Meissner, or submucosal, plexus.
These 12 neurons, which were receiving news of electric shocks and generating dopamine, converge on another group of neurons called Kenyon cells to which they seem to be passing on news of the shock, via dopamine.
"Once we understand which direction each neuron likes to fire in, we can look at a larger group of neurons and figure out what direction the patient is trying to move the arm in," Schwartz said.
The uncanny sense of déjà vu concealed no special meaning after all; it was just an illusion of familiarity created by a group of neurons that misfired from time to time.
This tiny group of neurons, which is connected to the retina, oversees the cyclical response to darkness and light, directing the nearby pineal gland, for example, to make the hormone melatonin, which causes sleepiness.
The basic element, which they call a local processing unit, is a group of neurons with connecting interneurons that do not extend beyond the group.
A clique can be seen as a group of neurons that collectively respond to a particular stimuli.
