Neuronal burst dynamics in the human amygdala and hippocampus during memory encoding and retrieval

The human amygdala and hippocampus are hubs for memory processing. While many studies have linked neuronal firing patterns to memory recall, recent research has suggested that burst-like activity, which can induce plasticity through long-term potentiation or long-term depression, may play a crucial role in memory encoding and retrieval processes. Here, by directly recording single-neuron activity in the human amygdala and hippocampus while neurosurgical patients performed a natural scene recognition task, we demonstrated that bursting activity in the amygdala and hippocampus encodes the novelty and salience of sampled visual information. This bursting activity constitutes an independent neural code compared to firing rate, is primarily driven by pyramidal neurons, and is functionally related to memory recall performance. Together, our findings suggest that bursting activity in the human amygdala and hippocampus may serve as an important mechanism underlying information encoding and retrieval.