WATCH: One of the winners of the 2014 Nobel Prize in medicine, Edvard Moser, said on Monday that the award was an “inspiration” for science and that he hoped his research could help in the future treatment of Alzheimer’s.
STOCKHOLM – U.S.-British scientist John O’Keefe and Norwegian married couple May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discovering the brain’s positioning system.
This “inner GPS” helps explain how the brain creates “a map of the space surrounding us and how we can navigate our way through a complex environment,” the Nobel Assembly said.
O’Keefe, of University College London, discovered the first component of this positioning system in 1971 when he found that a certain type of nerve cell was always activated when a rat was at a certain place in a room.
Thirty-four years later May-Britt and Edvard Moser, of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, identified another type of nerve cell that generates a co-ordinate system for precise path-finding, the assembly said.
It said that knowledge about the brain’s positioning system may “help us understand the mechamism underpinning the devastating spatial memory loss” that affects people with Alzheimer’s disease.
WATCH: U.S.-British scientist John O’Keefe and Norwegian married couple May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discovering the “inner GPS” that helps the brain navigate through the world.
The Nobel awards in physics, chemistry, literature and peace will be announced later this week. The economics prize will be announced next Monday.
- ‘She gets to be 10’: Ontario child’s heart donated to girl the same age
- Bird flu risk to humans an ‘enormous concern,’ WHO says. Here’s what to know
- Shoppers faces proposed class action over claims company is ‘abusive’ to pharmacists
- Most Canadian youth visit dentists, but lack of insurance a barrier
Comments