Nobel medicine: what have discovered the winners? – Europe 1

Europe 1 Fabienne Cosnay with AFP Published 11:46, October 6, 2014 , Modified to 12:25, October 6, 2014

May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser is the fifth married couple to receive a Nobel Prize . © MAXPPP

Fabienne Cosnay with AFP

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INFO. The 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Anglo-American John O’Keefe and Norwegians May-Britt Moser and Edvar for their work on the sense of direction of the brain, the Nobel committee announced , on Monday. “Their findings (…) have solved a problem that has mobilized scientists and philosophers for centuries,” the jury in a statement.

An internal GPS in our brain. The winners were rewarded for their discoveries concerning the “cells that make up a geoposition system in the brain. ”

How It Works This internal GPS allows the brain to move into a room, showing the cellular basis for cognitive function later. Thanks to him, we can answer simple questions such as “How do we know where we are, how well are we to find the way from one place to another? And so how do we store this information in a manner we can immediately find the way the next time that we take the same road? “.

30 years of research. John O’Keefe discovered in 1971 the first component this GPS. It was not until 2005 that the Norwegian couple Edvard and May-Britt Moser identify another key component of this system, nerve cells that create a coordinate system to determine the positions.