New York Times :
A British-American scientist and a pair of Norwegian researchers were awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for discovering “an inner GPS in the brain” that enables virtually all creatures to navigate their surroundings.
John O’Keefe, 75, a British-American scientist, will share the prize of $1.1 million with May-Britt Moser, 51, and Edvard I. Moser, 52, only the second married couple to win a Nobel in medicine, who will receive the other half.
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?” said the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, which chooses the laureates.
The positioning system they discovered helps us know where we are, find our way from place to place and store the information for the next time, said Goran K. Hansson, secretary of the Karolinska’s Nobel Committee.
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to researchers who discovered how specific brain cells help rats and other mammals build spatial maps of their environment.
At left, gray lines show the path followed by a rat as it moves around a box looking for pieces of food.
Nerve cells called grid cells fire when the rat moves through certain locations. The firing pattern of a single grid cell is marked here with red dots. Groups of dots form a hexagonal grid, and the firing pattern persists even in darkness, when the rat cannot see where it is.
The grid cells seem to form an internal map of the local environment, and help the rat track where it is in space. Grid cells are thought to be involved with navigation, dead reckoning and the formation of mental maps.
The researchers documented that certain cells are responsible for the higher cognitive function that steers the navigational system.
Dr. O’Keefe began using neurophysiological methods in the late 1960s to study how the brain controls behavior and sense of direction. In 1971, he discovered the first component of the inner navigational system in rats. He identified nerve cells in the hippocampus region of the brain that were always activated when a rat was at a certain location.
He called them “place cells” and showed that the cells registered not only what they saw, but also what they did not see, by building inner maps in different environments.
Dr. O’Keefe was born in New York City to immigrant Irish parents and graduated from the City College of New York. In 1967, he earned a Ph.D. in physiological psychology at McGill University in Montreal, and then moved for postdoctoral training to University College London, where he is now a professor of cognitive neuroscience.
He told reporters that he was surprised to win a Nobel, Reuters reported, particularly after a “checkered” youth in which he studied the classics in school and aeronautics in college before venturing into philosophy and psychology.
