Recognition of complex visual stimuli involves the cooperative activity of millions of neurons.

“So you can pick out any one little element in this very complicated system and see that it's responding differentially to certain kinds of visual patterns and you think you're seeing a glimpse of some part of the process by which you recognize your grandmother's face. But that's a long way from a complete description and it certainly isn't going to be at the level of a magic single neuron that has the special stuff to recognize your grandmother, it's going to be in some pattern of activity across many, many cells resonating in some kind of special way that will represent the internal memory of your mother.”