Discoverers of the ‘internal GPS’ of the brain receive Nobel Prize in Medicine

The British-American researcher John O’Keefe and the Norwegian couple May-Britt and Edvard I. Moser received the Nobel Prize in medicine today for discovering a system of ‘internal GPS’ in the brain.

“The laureates discovered a positioning system,” an internal GPS “in the brain that allows us to orient in space”, said the jury in Stockholm.

This discovery establishes “how the brain creates a map of the space around us and how we move in a complex environment,” said the jury.

The jury added that the discovery of the ‘internal GPS’ represents a breakthrough in understanding how groups of specialized cells work together in the brain.