2014 Nobel Prize Winners For Medicine: Decoders of The Brain's GPS
2014 Nobel Prize Winners For Medicine: Decoders of The Brain's GPS
This year's Nobel Prize winners for medicine are Anglo-American scientist John O'Keefe and Norway's May-Britt and Edvard Moser. They have been awarded one of the highest and most prestigious scientific honours of the world for having solved the riddle of finding how the brain's internal positioning system worked. This has also provided clues regarding how diseases such as strokes and Alzheimer's affect the human brain.
The Nobel Assembly appreciated the efforts of the three scientists to uncover the truth behind a problem science had been grappling with for years. The assembly awarded the prize of SEK 8 million or USD 1.1 million to the winners in sincere recognition of their commitment to solving this ancient scientific puzzle relating to the brain.
The key research which focused on "How does the brain create a map of the space surrounding us and how can we navigate our way through a complex environment?" solved a lot of problems for the medical and scientific community. A Nobel committee member and professor at Karolinska Institute's Department of Neuroscience was quoted as having said the 3 winners have discovered "an inner GPS that makes it possible to know where we are and find our way".
O'Keefe is currently the director in neural circuits and behaviour at London's University College and he first discovered the component of the positioning system in 1971. Specifically, the award winning scientist found a type of neuron or nerve cell in the region of the brain known as the hippocampus which was always activated when the lab animal was in a certain point in the room. He made several more observations to conclude that these are place cells which were responsible for mapping the room.
In the year 1996, Edvard Moser and May-Britt Moser currently married and based in Trondheim's scientific institutes in Norway, worked with O'Keefe to learn how the activity of cells in the hippocampus could be recorded. The team led by Moser found cells in the entrohinal cortex region of the human brain which functions as a system for navigation. These are “gird cells” which a always function to create a map of the outside worked and provide knowledge regarding the location of a person or animal.
This is a fundamentally important piece of research which has changed human understanding of the brain. This research is very helpful in pointing out the origins of loss of spatial awareness in people with stroke or devastating brain diseases like dementia of which Alzheimer's is a common form. The Mosers have joined an elite group of married couples to win the coveted prize along with scientific geniuses Marie Curie and Pierre Curie.
The three scientists’ discoveries “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?” declared the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, which selects the laureates.
