How does Nobel Prize-winning research on brain circuits work?

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1. 1

   UK based neuroscientist wins Nobel Prize for work on the brain's "inner GPS"

   BMJ (Parish)Published Oct 7, 2014Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded jointly to UK based John O’Keefe and Norwegian husband and wife team May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser for their work in cognitive neuroscience. O’Keefe discovered cells in the rat hippocampus that constitute a positioning system in the brain. These “place cells,” described by many as an “inner GPS,” allow animals to build spatial memory to navigate their environment. The Mosers’ finding of “grid cells” during their time working with O’Keefe at University College London further explains the coordination and accuracy of positioning. O’Keefe’s success was met with great enthusiasm across the country, including …”

2. 2

   Nobel Prize In Physiology Or Medicine

   Chemical & Engineering News (DRAHL)Published Oct 13, 2014Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and Edvard Moser, for discovering the networks of cells that form the brain’s navigational system. This fundamental work in neuroscience could have applications in Alzheimer’s and other diseases. For hundreds of years, questions about how humans understand their location in their environment, and how they develop a sense of distance, have intrigued scientists and philosophers alike. It was 20th-century advances in psychology and neuroscience that allowed researchers to probe their questions experimentally. Once scientists understood that rats could learn to find their way through a maze, they sought the areas of the brain responsible for this behavior. In 1971, by recording electrical signals from individual nerve cells, John O’Keefe of University College London found cells in the hippocampus region of the brain that were active only when rats were in a certain place in their ...”

3. 3

   “Inner GPS”, a far-reaching influence in brain research—For the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2014

   Science China Life Sciences (He)Published Dec 1, 2014Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “A single grid cell fired when the rat crossed certain points on the floor; it turns out that these points formed a hexagonal grid, similar to a honeycomb. Results showed that each cell generates its own grid, and these overlapping patterns help the rat to recognize its loca-tion and direction. These discoveries have not only provided a better understanding of brain function in navigation, but have also opened novel avenues for studying cognitive functions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_cell). The visual orientation columns are organized regions of neurons, which are excited by visual line stimuli of varying angles that are located in the primary visual cortex and span multiple cortical layers. The geometry of the orientation columns are arranged in slabs that are perpendicular to the surface of the primary visual cortex [6]. For visual orienta-tion, animals and humans create a typical ordinate with neurons in a quadrate (90) pattern (Figure 1A) in the pri-mary visual cortex, but a hexagonal (120) pattern with six triangles in the entorhinal cortex (Figure 1B). Does the”

4. 4

   Is there a pilot in the brain? Contribution of the self-positioning system to spatial navigation

   Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience (Poucet et al.)Published Oct 30, 2015Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “The later discovery of head direction cells, grid cells and border cells, as well as of cells with more complex spatial signals, has led to the idea that there is a brain system devoted to providing the animal with the information required to achieve efficient navigation. Current questioning is focused on how these signals are integrated in the brain. In this review, we focus on the issue of how self-localization is performed in the hippocampal place cell map. To do so, we first shortly review the sensory information used by place cells and then explain how this sensory information can lead to two coding modes, respectively based on external landmarks (allothetic information) and self-motion cues (idiothetic information). We hypothesize that these two modes can be used concomitantly with the rat shifting from one mode to the other during its spatial displacements. We then speculate that sequential reactivation of place cells could participate in the resetting of self-localization under specific circumstances and in learning a new environment. Finally, we provide some predictions aimed at testing specific aspects of the proposed ideas.”

5. 5

   The mantle of the heavens: Reflections on the 2014 nobel prize for medicine or physiology

   Hippocampus (Morris)Published Mar 19, 2015Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “The award of the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 2014 for the discovery of place and grid cells was both a personal award to three great scientists and also a mark of the maturity of systems neuroscience as a discipline. This article offers both personal and scientific reflections on these discoveries, detailing both how getting to know all three winners had an impact on my life and the research questions that we shared in common work together. It ends with brief reflections on three important outstanding questions.”

6. 6

   Perspectives on 2014 Nobel Prize

   Hippocampus (Eichenbaum)Published Mar 19, 2015Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “In celebration of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, this issue of Hippocampus includes a collection of commentaries from a broad range of perspectives on the significance of position coding neurons in the hippocampal region. From the perspective of this student of hippocampal physiology, it is argued that place cells and grid cells reflect the outcome of experiments that strongly select the information available and correspondingly observe singular "trigger features" of these neurons. Notably, however, in more naturalistic situations where multiple dimensions of information are available, hippocampal neurons have mixed selectivity wherein population-firing patterns reflect the organization of many features of experience. Thus, while discoveries on position coding were major breakthroughs in penetrating the hippocampal code, future studies exploring more complex behaviors hold the promise of revealing the full contribution of the hippocampal region to cognition and memory.”