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posted by LaminatorX on Monday October 06 2014, @02:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the rat-in-a-maze dept.

Spotted over at Hacker News is a link to the announcement The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been jointly awarded: half to John O´Keefe, and the other half jointly to May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser, for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain:

This year´s Nobel Laureates have discovered a positioning system, an “inner GPS” in the brain that makes it possible to orient ourselves in space, demonstrating a cellular basis for higher cognitive function.

[In 1971] O’Keefe, a neuroscientist at University College London, discovered specialized “place cells” that were activated when a rat explored a room.

In 2005, the Mosers together discovered another component of the brain’s positioning system. The “grid cells” they found create a coordinate system by firing at regular spatial intervals as an animal explores a space. They went on to show how grid cells and place cells work together.

Story in Nature, and a corresponding feature story on the Mosers. Also a link to the original Hacker News Discussion.

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  • (Score: 1, Troll) by TheRaven on Monday October 06 2014, @02:07PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Monday October 06 2014, @02:07PM (#102415) Journal
    Did Soylent start hiring Slashdot editors?
    --
    sudo mod me up
    • (Score: 2) by lhsi on Monday October 06 2014, @02:12PM

      by lhsi (711) on Monday October 06 2014, @02:12PM (#102420) Journal

      My guess is that it was originally ...the "inner GPS"

      There was a bug whereby using quotes in a submission title stripped out everything after the first quote, maybe that's appeared again?

      • (Score: 2) by tonyPick on Monday October 06 2014, @02:18PM

        by tonyPick (1237) on Monday October 06 2014, @02:18PM (#102427) Homepage Journal

        That was the submission title. Good Guess :)

      • (Score: 1) by azrael on Monday October 06 2014, @02:30PM

        by azrael (2855) on Monday October 06 2014, @02:30PM (#102432)
        It was there... but not there.

        Hopefully now it is both there and there :)
      • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Monday October 06 2014, @02:36PM

        by paulej72 (58) on Monday October 06 2014, @02:36PM (#102436) Journal
        Not quotes, but smart quotes or html entities would be my thought. I just fixed a bug with story titles that would render html placed in the title (which is very bad). The fix for this may have broken some other things, so I'll be on the lookout for more of these errors.
        --
        Team Leader for SN Development
        • (Score: 1) by martyb on Monday October 06 2014, @02:54PM

          by martyb (76) on Monday October 06 2014, @02:54PM (#102444) Journal

          Not quotes, but smart quotes or html entities would be my thought. I just fixed a bug with story titles that would render html placed in the title (which is very bad). The fix for this may have broken some other things, so I'll be on the lookout for more of these errors.

          Yes, the original submission [soylentnews.org] had " around Brain's GPS.

          I replaced each of the Numeric Character Entities (NCEs) with a regular quote character and it looks okay, now. Note that each NCE was, itself, "de-referenced". with an """ instead of just an """ in each place.

          --
          Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
          • (Score: 2) by tonyPick on Monday October 06 2014, @03:45PM

            by tonyPick (1237) on Monday October 06 2014, @03:45PM (#102471) Homepage Journal

            Interestingly (or not) those appeared on the preview round trip. So I put in plain quotes, and they came back as the NCE's - caught them the first time around, but obviously didn’t spot them on the last "check the links and hit submit" cycle.

        • (Score: 2) by MrGuy on Monday October 06 2014, @03:00PM

          by MrGuy (1007) on Monday October 06 2014, @03:00PM (#102447)

          A new scientific model for evaluating vi vs. emacs"DROP ALL;COMMIT;

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @02:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @02:12PM (#102423)

      The takeaway is that the honorees aren't just innovative in medicine. They're pretty deep thinkers.

    • (Score: 2) by buswolley on Monday October 06 2014, @05:57PM

      by buswolley (848) on Monday October 06 2014, @05:57PM (#102533)

      Taking back my mod. Misunderstood.

      --
      subicular junctures
      • (Score: 2) by monster on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:45PM

        by monster (1260) on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:45PM (#103104) Journal

        You know moderation no longer can be undone by commenting, do you?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @02:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @02:15PM (#102424)

    finally an explanation why rearranging my fridge magnets helps me feel better when i'm in a down mood!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @03:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @03:04PM (#102451)
  • (Score: 1) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday October 08 2014, @02:08PM

    by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 08 2014, @02:08PM (#103579)

    I was wondering if these neurons were like magnetic field receptors or some other stuff that comes to mind reading "Brain GPS". It turns out no, they are just specialized memory for places:

    Although place cells are part of a non-sensory cortical system, their firing behavior is strongly correlated to sensory input. Place cells fire when an animal is located in parts of the environment known as place fields. These circuits may have important implications for memory, as they provide the spatial context for memories and past experiences. Like many other parts of the brain, place cell circuits are dynamic. They are constantly adjusting and remapping to suit the current location and experience of the brain. Place cells do not work alone to create visuospatial representation; they are a part of a complex circuit that informs place awareness and place memory.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_cell [wikipedia.org]