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3 Win Medicine Nobel for Discovering Brain’s GPS

| October 6, 2014 Comment

3 Win Medicine Nobel for Discovering Brain’s GPS – A US-British scientist who grew up in the South Bronx and a husband-and-wife research team from Norway won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for discovering the brain’s navigation system — the inner GPS that helps us find our way in the world — revelations could lead to advances in diagnosing Alzheimer’s.

The research by John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser represents a “paradigm shift” in neuroscience that could help researchers understand the sometimes severe spatial memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

In 1971, O’Keefe discovered during a study on rats, that a certain type of nerve cell always got activated when the rats were in a certain place in the room. He showed that these cells were helping build a map of the surrounding environment and not just registering the visual cues. This was the first component of the so-called inner GPS system.

In 2005, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser, neuroscientists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, identified another type of nerve cell, called the grid cell — that “generates a coordinate system for precise positioning and path-finding.”

According to the Nobel Assembly, these discoveries are significant because they help scientists understand how cells work together to perform complex cognitive functions such as memory, thinking, and planning.

The three Nobel Laureates will split the prize money of 8 million Swedish kronor (about $1.1 million), with half going to O’Keefe and the other half to the Mosers.

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