Edvard et May-Britt Moser

The brain is still mostly a black box, but May-Britt and Edvard Moser have opened a large window to see what is inside. The partners’ research focuses on memory, in all its various manifestations. As directors of the Centre for the Biology of Memory in Norway, they supervised the development of new methods for probing how brains encode, store and remember information. 

In 2005, their research in the rat's brain led to a groundbreaking discovery: the grid cells, which work like an internal GPS system. They are neurons that have since been observed in several mammal species, including human beings and that sit in a thin tissue in the brain called the entorhinal cortex. As the animal moves freely around a place it knows, its grid cells activate and draw a map made up of equilateral triangles, which are assembled into hexagons. 

The research group led by the Mosers demonstrated the phenomenon using single-neuron recording which showed a localized mark on a computer screen each time an individual neuron activated. Grid cells only light up when the animal reaches the spatial borders of its predetermined neuronal triangles. Those neurons are especially interesting since the regular patterning of the grid is not in any way related to the structure of the environment or to the sensory information that is available for the animal. On the contrary, the abstract spatial structure built within the brain by grid cells seems to be imposed onto the environment. 

The Mosers continue to explore how grid cells work, how they are born and how they interact with other types of neurons that also specialize in spatial localization. The partners are also interested in how the different types of memories function. They lead the research of the Centre for the Biology of Memory towards discoveries that could radically transform the understanding of the roots of behavior and cognition in mammals.