2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Awarded to John O’Keefe, FRS, May-Britt Moser, PhD, and Edvard I. Moser, PhD
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to John O’Keefe, FRS, and to May-Britt Moser, PhD, and Edvard I. Moser, PhD, for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain. This “inner GPS” makes it possible to orient ourselves in space and demonstrates a cellular basis for higher cognitive function.
Dr. O’Keefe will share half of the $1.1 million prize, and the two Dr. Mosers will share the other half, said the Karolinska Institutet.
The discoveries of these researchers have solved a problem that has occupied philosophers and scientists for centuries: how does the brain create a map of the space surrounding us, and how can we navigate our way through a complex environment?
Grid and Place Cells Form an Inner Map of the Environment
Dr. O’Keefe, of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, discovered the first component of this positioning system in 1971. He found that a type of nerve cell in the hippocampus was always activated when a rat occupied a particular place in the environment, while other nerve cells were activated when the rats were at other places.
Dr. O’Keefe was able to demonstrate that these “place cells” were not merely registering visual input, but were building up an inner map of the environment. He concluded that the hippocampus generates numerous maps, represented by the collective activity of place cells that are activated in different environments. Therefore, the memory of an environment can be stored as a specific combination of place cell activities in the hippocampus.
More than 3 decades later, in 2005, Drs. May-Britt and Edvard Moser, both of the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, discovered another key component of the brain’s positioning system in the entorhinal cortex. Here, “grid cells” were activated when the rat passed multiple locations arranged in a hexagonal grid. Collectively, these grid cells generate a coordinate system and allow for precise positioning and pathfinding. Their subsequent research demonstrated how place and grid cells make it possible to determine position and to navigate.
Recent investigations with brain imaging techniques, as well as studies of patients undergoing neurosurgery, have provided evidence that place and grid cells exist also in humans. Knowledge about the brain’s positioning system may help us understand the mechanism underpinning the devastating spatial memory loss that affects people with Alzheimer’s disease.
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