This is the craziest news I’ve ever heard. Researchers in California who have been working to understand the neuroscience of memory, recently conducted an experiment involving The Simpsons, and the results were a little surprising.
The test found that an individual brain cell fires when a person watches an episode of The Simpsons, and when that person recalls what happened in the episode the cell fires up again.
The same cell responded on a lesser scale to Seinfeld, and not at all to Friends —two other notable comedies, although neither one a cartoon.
Of 48 different clips shown to a group of epilepsy patients at UCLA Medical Center, The Simpsons elicited a firing response from the cell of 15 times per second, whereas the other clips either produced responses of a couple of times per second or blank periods.
The firing also lasted for several seconds and beyond the clip time frame for The Simpsons.
The cell in question is located near the hippocampus, the area of the brain many experts believe is somehow linked to memory.
This study proves as much, according to a report published in the journal Science by Dr. Hagar Gelbard-Sagiv of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, Prof Itzhak Fried of the University of California, Los Angeles and colleagues.
Thoughts? amber@tvguide.ca
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