From Running Rats to Brain Maps: A Nobel Odyssey

When the phone rang 10 years ago while Norwegian neuroscientist May-Britt Moser was in a particularly engaging lab meeting, she almost didn't answer it.

Good thing she did!

It was Göran Hansson, secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, with the news: May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser, along with their mentor and colleague John O’Keefe from the University College London, had just won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of two types of brain cells that work together to function like a GPS in the brain.

That system allows animals -including us - to know where they are, and navigate to where they want to go.

This was a groundbreaking discovery because it gave us critical insight into how an area of the brain, far from the normal sensory inputs of sight, sound and touch, constructs its own way of understanding space. And, because this same area of the brain, and our ability to navigate, are affected early on in Alzheimer's patients, it offers an inroad for clinicians studying the disease. In fact, the KG Jebsen Centre for Alzheimer's Disease, a part of the Mosers' Kavli Institute, is working to bring these fundamental insights about the brain to clinical practice.

This episode is a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Nobel award.

To make it, I cracked open a time capsule of sorts: When the Mosers first learned that they had won the scientific world's highest honour, I ran down to their lab and recorded everything! The files in this podcast are from that day and the heady days afterwards.

My guests on today's episode are May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser.

You can also find lots more material, including videos, more popular science articles and background information on this webpage.

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