Scientific Background The Brain’s Navigational Place and Grid Cell System The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Introduction Medicine is awarded to Dr. John M. O’Keefe, The sense of place and the ability to navigate Dr. May-Britt Moser and Dr. Edvard I. are some of the most fundamental brain Moser for their discoveries of nerve cells in functions. The sense of place gives a the brain that enable a sense of place and perception of the position of the body in the navigation. These discoveries are ground environment and in relation to surrounding breaking and provide insights into how objects. During navigation, it is interlinked mental functions are represented in the with a sense of distance and direction that is brain and how the brain can compute based on the integration of motion and complex cognitive functions and behaviour. knowledge of previous positions. We An internal map of the environment and a depend on these spatial functions for sense of place are needed for recognizing recognizing and remembering the and remembering our environment and for environment to find our way. navigation. This navigational ability, which requires integration of multi-modal sensory information, movement execution and Questions about these fundamental brain functions have engaged philosophers and memory capacities, is one of the most th complex of brain functions. The work of the scientists for a long time. During the 18 2014 Laureates has radically altered our century the German philosopher Immanuel understanding of these functions. John Kant (1724-1804) argued that some mental O’Keefe discovered place cells in the abilities exist independent of experience. He hippocampus that signal position and considered perception of place as one of provide the brain with spatial memory these innate abilities through which the capacity. May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. external world had to be organized and Moser discovered in the medial entorhinal perceived. cortex, a region of the brain next to hippocampus, grid cells that provide the A concept of a map-like representation of brain with an internal coordinate system place in the brain was advocated for by the essential for navigation. Together, the American experimental psychologist Edward hippocampal place cells and the entorhinal Tolman, who studied how animals learn to grid cells form interconnected nerve cell navigate (Tolman, 1948). He proposed that networks that are critical for the animals could experience relationships computation of spatial maps and between places and events and that the navigational tasks. The work by John exploration of the environment gradually O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser resulted in the formation of a cognitive map has dramatically changed our that enabled animals to navigate and find understanding of how fundamental the optimal path through the environment. cognitive functions are performed by neural In this view, cognitive maps represent the circuits in the brain and shed new light onto environment as a gestalt that allows the how spatial memory might be created. subject to experience the room and navigate. Tolman’s theory opposed the prevailing view The firing pattern of these cells was among behaviourists that complex completely unexpected. Place cells were behaviours are achieved by chains of active in a way that had not been seen for sensory-motor response relationships. But it any cells in the brain before. Individual place did not address where in the brain these cells were only active when the animal was functions may be localized and how the in a particular place in the environment, brain computes such complex behaviours. namely their place field. By systematically The advent of techniques to record from changing the environment and testing cells in the brain of animals that were freely different theoretical possibilities for the moving in the environment, using chronically creation of the place fields O’Keefe showed implanted micro wires (Sturmwasser, 1958), that place cell firing did not merely reflect made it possible to approach these activity in sensory neurons, but that it questions. represented a complex gestalt of the environment. Finding the place cells John O’Keefe had a background in Different place cells could be active in physiological psychology, working with different places and the combination of Ronald Melzack at McGill University before activity in many place cells created an he moved to the laboratory of the pain internal neural map representing a particular researcher Patrick Wall at University College environment (O'Keefe, 1976; O'Keefe and in London, where he started his work on Conway, 1978). O’Keefe concluded together behaving animals in the late 1960s. There he with Nadel that place cells provide the brain discovered the place cells, when recording with a spatial reference map system, or a from neurons in the dorsal partition of sense of place (O'Keefe and Nadel, 1978). He hippocampus, called CA1, together with showed that the hippocampus can contain Dostrovsky, in rats moving freely in a multiple maps represented by combinations bounded area (O'Keefe and Dostrovsky, of activity in different place cells that were 1971) (Figure 1). active at different times in different environments. A specific serial combination of active place cells may therefore represent a unique environment, while other combinations represent other environments. Through O’Keefe’s discoveries, the cognitive map theory had found its representation in the brain. A prerequisite for O’Keefe’s experiments was the development of appropriate recording techniques to be used in freely Figure 1. Place cells. To the right is a schematic of the moving animals. Although O’Keefe was an rat. The hippocampus, where the place cells are located is highlighted. The grey square depicts the early user of these techniques, he was not open field the rat is moving over. Place cells fire when the first to record from hippocampal or the animal reaches a particular location in the other nerve cells in intact animals (see environment. The dots indicate the rat’s location in O’Keefe and Nadel 1978). However, the arena when the place cell is active. Different place researchers mostly used restricted cells in the hippocampus fire at different places in the arena. behavioural task or strict stimulus-response protocols. In contrast, O’Keefe recorded the 2 cellular activity during natural behaviour, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser, who which allowed him to observe the unique were studying the hippocampus, both during place fields and relate the neural activity in their PhD work in Per Andersen’s laboratory the place cells to represent the sense of in Oslo and afterwards both as visiting place. scientists in Richard Morris’ laboratory in Edinburgh and John O’Keefe’s laboratory in In subsequent experiments, O’Keefe showed London, asked whether the place cell firing that the place cells might have memory can be generated from activity outside functions (O'Keefe and Conway, 1978; hippocampus. The major input to the O'Keefe and Speakman, 1987). The hippocampus comes from a structure on the simultaneous rearrangement in many place dorsal edge of the rat’s brain, the entorhinal cells in different environments was called cortex. A large part of the output from the remapping and O’Keefe showed that entorhinal cortex projects to the dentate remapping is learned, and once it is gurus in hippocampus, which in turn connect established, it can be stable over time (Lever to the region in the hippocampus called CA3, et al., 2002). The place cells may therefore and further to CA1 in the dorsal provide a cellular substrate for memory hippocampus. Interestingly, this is the same processes, where a memory of an the part of the brain in which John O’Keefe environment can be stored as specific first found the place cells. In 2002, the combinations of place cells. Mosers found that disconnecting projections from the entorhinal cortex through CA3 did At first, the proposition that the not abolish the CA1 place fields (Brun et al., hippocampus was involved in spatial 2002). These findings, and the knowledge navigation was met with some scepticism. that medial entorhinal cortex is also directly However, it was later appreciated that the and reciprocally connected to the CA1 discovery of place cells, the meticulous region, prompted May-Britt Moser and demonstration that these cells represent a Edvard Moser to look in the medial mental map far from primary sensory input, entorhinal cortex for place coding cells. In a and the proposal that hippocampus contains first study they established, similar to what an inner map that can store information others had shown, that the medial about the environment, were seminal. entorhinal cortex contained cells that shared O’Keefe’s discovery sparked a large number characteristics with the place cells in of experimental and theoretical studies on hippocampus (Fyhn et al., 2004). However, how place cells are engaged in generating in a later study using larger encounters for spatial information and in spatial memory the animals to move in, they discovered a processes. The general notion from these novel cell type, the grid cells, that had studies is that the key function of the place unusual properties, (Hafting et al., 2005). cells are to create a map of the environment, although they may also be involved in The grid cells showed an astonishing firing measuring distance under some pattern. They were active in multiple places circumstances (Ravassard et al., 2013). in the open box that together formed nodes of an extended hexagonal grid (Figure 2), From hippocampus to grid cells in the similar to the hexagonal arrangements of entorhinal cortex holes in a beehive. Through the 1980s and 1990s the prevailing Grid cells in the same area of the medial theory was that the formation of place fields enthorinal cortex fire with the same spacing originated within the hippocampus itself.