Omnivorous mammals feed us a wide variety of foods. Driven by curiosity, primates, rodents, and canids try new foods and, at the same time, we have learned to avoid them if eating them has made us dizzy or sick before; this is true even after a single bad experience. It's crucial to learn which foods are toxic to us because survival is key. But how can we learn this from a single exposure?

Human memory is one of the most complex cognitive processes of our brain. We store memories that help shape our identity, and we are also able to distinguish objects and people regardless of their context. Now, and for the first time, a group of Catalan researchers from the Hospital del Mar Research Institute has observed in a study how the neurons in our brain collect these memories, which "allows us to establish higher and abstract relationships, which constitutes the basis of human intelligence," according to the authors of this research published this Thursday in the journal Cell Reports.