Nobel Medicine Prize for ‘brain GPS’ discovery
pharmafile | October 6, 2014 | News story | Medical Communications, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing |
The Anglo-American John O’Keefe and Norwegian couple May-Britt and Edvard Moser have all won the 2014 Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering the brain’s internal positioning system.
This ‘internal GPS’ navigation system helps humans find their way around the world, and it is hoped that by understanding this new element to the brain it could give doctors clues as to how strokes and Alzheimer’s disease affect the brain.
The 8 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million) prize was announced today from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.
In 1971, O´Keefe discovered the first component of this positioning system. He found that a type of nerve cell in an area of the brain called the hippocampus that was always activated when a rat was at a certain place in a room.
Other nerve cells were activated when the rat was at other places. O´Keefe concluded that these ‘place cells’ formed a map of the room.
More than three decades later, in 2005, May-Britt and Edvard Moser discovered another key component of the brain’s positioning system.
They identified another type of nerve cell, which they called ‘grid cells’, which generate a co-ordinate system and allow for precise positioning and path finding.
Their subsequent research showed how place and grid cells make it possible to determine position and to navigate.
The Institute says that the scientists’ discovery solved a problem that has occupied philosophers and scientists such as Immanuel Kant and Edward Tolman for centuries, namely: “How does the brain create a map of the space surrounding us and how can we navigate our way through a complex environment?”
The answer, according to the research from O´Keefe, May-Britt and Moser, is the ‘inner GPS’ inherent in the human brain.
The Institute says this has been backed up by recent investigations with brain imaging techniques, as well as studies of patients undergoing neurosurgery, which have provided evidence that place and grid cells exist also in humans.
In patients with Alzheimer’s disease, the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex are frequently affected at an early stage, and these individuals often lose their way and cannot recognise the environment.
Knowledge about the brain’s positioning system may, therefore, help researchers understand the mechanism underpinning the devastating spatial memory loss that affects people with this disease.
The Institute says: “The discovery of the brain’s positioning system represents a paradigm shift in our understanding of how ensembles of specialised cells work together to execute higher cognitive functions. It has opened new avenues for understanding other cognitive processes, such as memory, thinking and planning.”
Ben Adams
