Every time you think she can’t get more famous, something like this happens.
If you spend any time on TikTok, you might have come across a video that combines two seemingly unconnected topics: Jennifer Aniston and neuroscience.
That seems like a surprising connection, we agree, but it only gets more interesting from there: Apparently, there are specific neurons in some of our brains that only light up for this legendary comedic actress.
TikTok users have had a field day with this information, but it’s also left us with a lot of questions. Why would a neuron light up for Aniston, specifically? And how in the world did someone make this unbelievable discovery? If you want the answers, we are — as the Friends theme song says — there for you.
What is the Jennifer Aniston neuron?
Just over a decade ago, a UCLA neurosurgeon named Itzhak Fried made a fascinating — dare we say monumental? — discovery during some routine research. (Though, to be fair, “routine research” looks a little different when you’re a neuroscientist.)
Most patients actually remain conscious during brain surgery, and doctors often ask them a number of wide-ranging questions in order to locate and then map out the part of the brain they need to work on. (This is, if you can believe it, completely painless.) During these procedures, Fried asked a number of his patients if they would be interested in helping him do some exploratory science, and many of them said yes — which is where Aniston comes in.
During surgery, Fried would show patients a number of pictures, including a photo of Julia Roberts, photos of non-famous people, photos of animals and places, and, yes, a photo of Aniston. Strangely, when people saw a picture of Aniston, a particular neuron would begin to flash on Fried’s screen, which indicated that her face was lighting up a certain part of a patient’s brain. Here’s the confusing part: The photo of Roberts, another equally famous A-lister, didn’t light up that specific neuron. Only Aniston did.
But when Fried shared his research, other scientists started their own experimentation, which led to the discovery of other neurons that lit up specifically for famous faces like Halle Berry and Kobe Bryant.
How the ‘Jennifer Aniston neuron’ solved a decades-long question
During Fried’s research, he didn’t show just one photo of Aniston. He showed many images, all of which portrayed her in a different contexts. (Picture it: Jen walking down the street in casual clothes, Jen on the red carpet with ex-husband Brad Pitt, and so on.) In later studies, other celebrity neurons were found in the same way — but why?
The best way to understand it is by learning about the other nickname for the “Jennifer Aniston neuron”: the “grandmother cell.” That term dates back to the 1960s, decades before the Aniston-centric research discovery, when a handful of scientists argued that individual neurons could hold associations to individual concepts from our lives, like a person’s grandmother.
But this theory was never proven until Fried ran the research with pictures of Aniston.
Thanks to this discovery, scientists were able to make new hypotheses about memory, arguing that it’s easier than we previously thought for our neural networks to form new, lasting associations. The discovery of neurons that are specifically linked to individual people or concepts has paved the way for countless studies in the last decade — and it’s all thanks to our leading lady, Miss Aniston.
