Nobel Prize in medicine awarded for discovery of brain’s ‘GPS’

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.

Their findings in rats — and research suggests human have the same system in their brains — represent a "paradigm shift" in the knowledge of how cells work together to perform cognitive functions and could help scientists understand the mechanisms behind Alzheimer's disease, the Nobel Assembly said.

"This year's Nobel Laureates have discovered a positioning system, an 'inner GPS' in the brain that makes it possible to orient ourselves in space," the assembly explained.

O'Keefe, 75, of University College London, discovered the first component of this 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. He demonstrated that these "place cells" were building up a map of the environment, not just registering visual input.

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 —the "grid cell" — that generates a coordinate system for precise positioning and path-finding, the assembly said.

"I'm still in shock. This is so great," May-Britt Moser, 51, said in a statement posted on the Nobel website.

Hege Tunstad, a spokeswoman at the university in Trondheim, said May-Britt Moser was at the university when she found out she had won.

"She needed a minute to cry and speak with her team," Tunstad said. Moser's 52-year-old husband was on a plane and didn't immediately learn the news.

The Mosers join an exclusive club of married couples to win a Nobel Prize that includes scientific greats Pierre Curie and Marie Curie.

The Nobel Assembly said that knowledge about the brain's positioning system may "help us understand the mechanism underpinning the devastating spatial memory loss" that affects people with Alzheimer's disease.

The discoveries have also opened new avenues for understanding cognitive functions such as memory, thinking and planning, it said.

"Thanks to our grid and place cells we don't have to walk around with a map to find our way each time we visit a city because we have that map in our head," said Juleen Zierath, chair of the medicine prize committee. "I think without these cells we would have a really hard time to survive."

The Nobel laureates won Columbia University's Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize last year for their discoveries.

The Nobel awards in physics, chemistry, literature and peace will be announced later this week. The economics prize will be announced next Monday.

The winners of each category split the prize money of 8 million Swedish kronor (about $1.1 million). Each winner also receives a diploma and a gold medal.

Created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901. The winners always collect their awards on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.

Last year's medicine award went to researchers who discovered how substances are transported within cells, a process involved in such important activities as brain cell communication and the release of insulin.

Wire services