2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Discovering the Brain’s GPS
7 Outubro 2014
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to scientists Edvard Moser, May-Britt Moser (Norway), and John O’Keefe (UK) for their discoveries about spatial orientation cells in the brain.
O’Keefe demonstrated the existence of so-called “place cells” in a brain region called the hippocampus, best known as one of the most important memory centers. The Mosers, in turn, discovered a type of cell in a nearby structure, the entorhinal cortex, capable of “projecting” a virtual map—a “grid” of spatial locations. These grid cells provide information about the environment to the hippocampal place cells, allowing animals to orient themselves in space.
When O’Keefe began his experiments in the 1960s, neuroscientists doubted that neuronal activity could be associated with any type of behavior. He was surprised to discover that certain hippocampal neurons fired when experimental animals moved and changed location. O’Keefe theorized that the collective activity of these cells formed an “internal map” that helped the animal locate itself in space.
However, until the Mosers’ discovery, it was unknown where the information feeding the place cells came from. They found that grid cells fire in different locations of a virtual hexagonal pattern, created entirely in the brain—forming a “virtual map.” This was the first demonstration of such a system in the brain. Experts say that, had someone suggested the existence of such a system before this discovery, they would have been considered crazy.
Relevant publications:
- J. O’Keefe and J. Dostrovsky. The hippocampus as a spatial map. Preliminary evidence from unit activity in the freely-moving rat. (1971) Brain Research 34:1, 171-175
- Torkel Hafting, Marianne Fyhn, Sturla Molden, May-Britt Moser & Edvard I. Moser. Microstructure of a spatial map in the entorhinal cortex. (2005) Nature 436, 801–806
- Nobel prize for decoding brain’s sense of place. Nature.