The discoverers of the “internal GPS” brain, Nobel prize of … – Reuters

MADRID, 6 Oct (IRIN) –

British-American John O’Keefe , on the one hand, and the Norwegian marriage made by May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser have been awarded on Monday “for their discoveries of cells comprising a positioning system in the brain”, as announced by the Nobel Assembly in Stockholm Institute Karokinska.

The winners, highlighted the Karolinska Institute have discovered an “internal GPS” in the brain that allows people to orient themselves in space and always know where they are.

O’Keefe discovered 1971 the first part of this positioning system after detecting a type of nerve cell in the hippocampus was always active when a rat was in a certain place in a room.

Other nerve cells were activated when the rat was elsewhere. This allowed him to conclude that these “place cells” formed a map of the room.

In 2005, Moser marriage, the fifth to be awarded a Nobel Prize, discovered another key component positioning system of the brain after identifying another type of nerve cell, christened “cell grid,” generating a coordinate system and allows accurate positioning.

His subsequent investigation, as explained by the Institute Karolinska showed how place cells and grid cells to determine the position and navigate to people.

“The discoveries of John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser have solved a problem that has occupied philosophers and scientists for centuries: how the brain creates a map of the space around us and how we can make our way in a complex environment “, stressed the Karolinska Institute, stressing that” the sense of place and ability? move are fundamental to our existence. “

THE WINNERS

John O’Keefe was born in 1939 in New York and has dual American and British nationality. He holds a Ph.D. in Physiological Psychology from McGill University in Canada since 1967, after which he moved to England for a postdoc at University College London.

In 1987, he was appointed Professor of Neuroscience Congnitiva of this university and is currently director of the Welcome Center Sainsbury Neural Circuits and Behavior at the center.

Meanwhile, May-Britt Moser, the eleventh woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Medicine, was born in the Swedish town of Fosnavag in 1963 and studied psychology at the University of Oslo with her future husband and his Ph.D. in Neuropsychology in 1995.

He has worked at the University of Edinburgh and University College London, before moving on 1996 at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Here he was appointed professor of Neuroscience in 2000 and currently is director of the Center for Neural Computation in Trondheim.

Her husband, Edvard I. Moser, born in 1962 in the Norwegian city of Alesund. He holds a PhD in Neurophysiology from the University of Oslo since 1995 and was with his wife at the University of Edinburgh and as a visiting scientist in the laboratory of John O * Keefe in London. In 1996 he also moved to the University of Trondheim, which was appointed professor in 1998 She is currently director of the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in Trondheim.

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