The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was just announced at the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. The winners are John O'Keefe and jointly May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser "for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain."
The prize was announced by Göran K. Hansson, Secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine.
Ole Kiehn of the Karolinska Institutet gave a brief introduction to the laureates and their discovery. United States-born O'Keefe and Norwegians Moser and Moser have provided the answer to how our brains know where we are (our location and proximity to other locations).
According to Kiehn, thirty years after O'Keefe noted changes in the hippocampus of rats when they were in a familiar location, the Mosers made a discovery of grid cells. The human brain can create a navigation system or "GPS", summarized Kiehn.
"So, the discoveries by the Nobel laureates provided a paradigm shift in our understanding of how groups of specialized nerve cells work together to execute our brain functions," explained Kiehn. "The work has opened new avenues as to how cognitive processes are integrated and computed by the brain."
