October of this year marks a special occasion for scientists, researchers and authors around the world as they’re work is acknowledged through the awarding of the prestigious Nobel Prize. On October 6, the Nobel in Physiology, or Medicine, was awarded to three neuroscientists for their discovering and studying brain cells that form a positioning system or, what CNN referred to as ‘our hard-wired GPS.’ For this specific research, John O’Keefe, May-Britt Mouser and her spouse, Edvard I. Moser, were all awarded the Nobel Prize together with a monetary compensation of $1.2 million, which was split between them.
Their research relates to certain brain cells that mark our position and aid us in navigating from point A to point B. The same cells help us memorize the paths we have taken so that we can repeat out trips. Because these cells are also memory-related, by studying them researchers could potentially make important breakthroughs in memory-impairment illnesses such as Alzheimer. These positioning cells can be found in our hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex. Both are responsible for memory and orientation but the latter also connects the two hippocampi we have with the huge neocortex where most of out grey matter lies.
It has been observed that patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease are faced with the premature disintegration of the above-mentioned cells which leave the patients disorientated, confused and more prone to get lost. Thus, by understanding how our inner GPS functions, future studies might find a solution to confront memory and orientation impairment disease. Also, the same cells could provide us with a ‘cellular basis for higher cognitive function.’
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These memory and orientation cells that compose our own GPS were first discovered in 1971 by British neuroscientist John O’Keefe. He first observed that, in rats, certain brain cells became activated whenever the mammal was in a particular place. He name them ‘place cells.’ 36 years later, the Mosers, a Norwegian couple, added a new discovery to O’Keefe’s study. ‘They identified another type of nerve cell, which they called ‘grid cells,’ that generate a coordinate system and allow for precise positioning and pathfinding,’ as the Nobel Prize statement noted. The Mosers also figured out how the place cell and the grid cells where inter-connected and helped the brain in figuring out where we are and where we are going. Simply put, place cells tell us we are at point A while grid cells tell us how to get to point B.