The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded on Monday to American-British neuroscientist John O’Keefe, and Norwegian scientists May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser.
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awards the prize annually to “the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine.” It is one of five Nobel Prizes established by Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, in his will in 1895.
The trio received the award for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain, which was described as an “inner GPS.”
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Together, these discoveries explain how the brain creates a map of space and how we navigate our way through a complex environment.
