The Nobel Prize for Medicine to three discoverers of GPS brain – Le Nouvel Observateur

by Mia Shanley and Niklas Pollard

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – The 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded Monday to three neuroscientists, gringo John O’Keefe and Norwegian husband May-Britt and Edvard Moser, for their work on the “geoposition system” of the brain, which helps to better understand diseases like Alzheimer’s.

“Their findings (…) have solved a problem that mobilized philosophers and scientists for centuries, “said the Nobel Committee at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

” How does the brain it creates a map of the world and how arrivons- us to move in a complex environment?, “the Nobel committee.

” Knowledge System geoposition brain could thus help us understand the mechanism underlying the loss of spatial cues affecting Alzheimer’s patients, “he adds.

John O’Keefe, born in 1939, leads the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural circuits and behavior at the University of London. Moser for their work in scientific institutes Trondheim, Norway.

In 1971 John O’Keefe discovered the first component of the system geoposition of our brain.

He then established that a certain type of nerve cells in a brain region called the hippocampus, was still activated when a rat was at a certain place in a room. Other nerve cells were activated when the same rat was in other places.

O’Keefe concluded that these “place cells” composed together a map of the room.

THE NOBEL PEACE Friday

Thirty-four years later, in 2005, May-Britt Moser, born in 1963, and her husband Edvard Moser, who is now 52 years , brought to light another essential component of the system geoposition brain. They identified another type of nerve cells, called “grid cells” that create a coordinated system and make it possible to accurately locate and find his way.

Their subsequent research has shown how the “place cells” and “grid cells” allowed, together, determine its position and move.

Moser joined the very exclusive club of married couples who have won the Nobel, including

found Pierre and Marie Curie.

The Nobel Prize for Medicine, with 8 million Swedish kronor (880,000 euros), is the first prize awarded annually by the committee. It will be followed on Tuesday by the Nobel physics and chemistry on Wednesday by one, the literature prize being awarded Thursday. Then comes one of peace on Friday and finally the economy, on October 13, which will conclude the 2014 season.

(Tangi Salaun and Eric Faye for the French service)