Distinct neuronal populations in the human brain combine content and context

The medial temporal lobe, and particularly the hippocampus, has been proposed to encode items in context1,2. Although hippocampal memory representations are largely context-dependent in rodents3,4, concept cells in humans appear to be context-invariant5. However, it remains unknown how item and context information are combined to form or retrieve integrated item-in-context memories at the single-neuron level in humans. Here we show that coordinated activity of distinct neuronal populations supports item-in-context memory. In a context-dependent picture-comparison task, we recorded 3,109 neurons from 16 neurosurgical patients, identifying 597 stimulus-modulated (pre-screened) and 200 context-modulated neurons…