May-Britt Moser
Who was May-Britt Moser?
Nobel laureate: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2014)
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on May-Britt Moser (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
May-Britt Moser, a Norwegian psychologist and neuroscientist born in 1963 in Fosnavåg, Norway, is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She has established a top-tier research program in spatial neuroscience, significantly altering our understanding of how mammals navigate and remember locations.
Moser studied psychology at the University of Oslo and earned a PhD in neurophysiology from the Faculty of Medicine in 1995. She also attended the University of Edinburgh during her studies. In 1996, she became an associate professor in biological psychology at NTNU and was promoted to professor of neuroscience in 2000. Her research group gained 'centre of excellence' status in 2002, highlighting the outstanding quality of their work.
Working with her former husband, Edvard Moser, she discovered grid cells in the entorhinal cortex. These specialized neurons provide a coordinate system that helps animals navigate. Their finding, along with the identification of other cell types involved in spatial representation, showed how the brain builds an internal GPS system. Their research expanded on earlier work on place cells, offering a fuller understanding of the brain's spatial mechanisms.
In 2014, May-Britt Moser shared half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edvard Moser for their work on grid cells and the brain's positioning system. The other half went to John O'Keefe for discovering place cells. This award honored years of dedicated research, from the 1990s to their pivotal 2005 Nature paper on grid cells. Since 2023, she has led the Centre for Algorithms in the Cortex, continuing to advance neuroscience by investigating how neural circuits carry out computational algorithms.
Before Fame
Growing up in Fosnavåg, a small coastal town in western Norway, May-Britt Moser was fascinated by the mind and brain from an early age. Her journey into neuroscience started with studying psychology at the University of Oslo, where she became interested in the biological basis of behavior and thinking.
The 1980s and 1990s were an exciting time in neuroscience, with new technologies allowing researchers to record from individual brain cells in animals as they moved around. John O'Keefe's discovery of place cells in the 1970s had raised questions about how the brain understands space, paving the way for the next generation of researchers like Moser to make breakthrough discoveries about the neural circuits behind navigation and memory.
Key Achievements
- Co-discovered grid cells in the entorhinal cortex, revealing the brain's coordinate system
- Won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries about the brain's positioning system
- Established a world-renowned center of excellence in spatial neuroscience at NTNU
- Identified multiple types of space-representing cells that work together for navigation
- Published groundbreaking research that transformed understanding of spatial memory and navigation
Did You Know?
- 01.She discovered grid cells by systematically recording from neurons just one layer deeper than the hippocampus, in the entorhinal cortex
- 02.Her research team uses rats running through mazes while measuring individual brain cell activity with implanted electrodes
- 03.The hexagonal firing pattern of grid cells resembles a honeycomb structure when mapped
- 04.She was the second woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine as a solo or shared recipient
- 05.Her laboratory at NTNU includes specialized rooms for behavioral testing with precise spatial tracking systems
Family & Personal Life
Awards & Honors
| Award | Year | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine | 2014 | for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain |
| Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize | 2013 | — |
| Fridtjof Nansen Award of Excellence, Mathematics-Natural sciences class | 2013 | — |
| Årets trønder | 2014 | — |
| Körber European Science Prize | 2014 | — |
| Karl Spencer Lashley Award | 2014 | — |
| Perl-UNC Prize | 2012 | — |
| W. Alden Spencer Award | 2005 | — |
| Eric K. Fernströms Nordiska Pris | 2008 | — |
| prix Liliane-Bettencourt pour les sciences du vivant | 2006 | — |
| Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine | 2011 | — |
| Erna Hamburger Prize | 2016 | — |
| Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav | 2018 | — |
| Eric K. Fernströms Nordiska Pris | 2008 | — |