The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine | Hacker News Reader

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

nobelprize.org

155 pointstchalla16 comments

The Mosers' work is very much deserving recognition. They've made fundamental discoveries with really beautiful experiments (well-designed, well-executed, thorough). On a personal note, I referenced their work on place cells as a possible use of phenomena I was studying in my own research. And I wasn't even aware of their ideas when I started (they occupied a slightly different sub-field of neuroscience). It's delightful to see the Mosers rewarded.

Another item of note: During introductory neuroscience class, the idea was "Hippocampus, learning & memory. Hippocampus, learning & memory. Hippocampus, learning & memory." Perhaps not so brutally, and I may have missed some subtleties. I found it quite refreshing to learn that the hippocampus was involved so deeply in a task that wasn't so starkly "This arbitrary experimental task is aversive; I, mouse, must avoid it." Hippocampus...is there anything it can't do? <Leonard Nimoy: "The answer is yes.">

Following is a neuroscientist's get-off-my-lawn rant

A Comment Wherein `bl Gripes about Stretched Tech Analogies Concerning Neuroscience.

A GPS device receives signals from a set of beacons with well-established, fixed locations (i.e., geostationary satellites). Knowing the beacons' fixed locations, the device is able to triangulate its own position. A GPS device can go to a completely unfamiliar location and work exactly as well as when its at a location its been to hundreds of times.

One could conceivably think of a mammalian visual system surmounted on a position-encoded cranium as equivalent to the GPS beacon system. But hippocampal place cells would have absolutely no contribution to navigating an unfamiliar environment because they had not been "trained".

Better to avoid the gripe... GPS satellites are not in fixed locations, and triangulation is not used to determine position (it is calculated based on time of flight to 4+ satellites.)

Sadly the ship has sailed on the use of GPS as a metaphor for "internal map". Since people don't know how it works there seems to be no possibility of correcting this trend. Another example is in the endorsement for this book: http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Just-Freedom/

Drat! I committed an error similar to the one I was griping against: being technically sloppy.

Believe it or not, I paused for half a heartbeat while typing fixed and triangulation while I was typing and thought to myself "Should I go double-check this on some hard-to-access reference, say Wikipedia? Nah. Better blurt this out before I head out the door for the day".

I ought to be careful how I phrase my gripes so that they convey my intention: keeping discussions accurate about subjects which I know a bit. Poor metaphors seem to aggravate me more than most.

Thanks for setting me straight.

My student newspaper has written about the Moser couple and their research several times [1][2]. It's in Norwegian, though, so not sure how much of use it is to share (edit: apparently we have an English version of the second article, see response to this post).

Does anyone have good resources about their research for a layman? Most international articles I've found contain very little other than the same stuff in this press release.

[1]: http://dusken.no/artikkel/24478/ett-kart-for-alle-rom/ [2]: http://dusken.no/artikkel/22614/hjernefamilie/

Desk editor and fellow hacker at dusken.no here. For international viewers, an English version of [2] is available here: http://dusken.no/artikkel/22627/a-brainy-family/

I'm stuck at home with a herniated disk, but more is probably getting translated as we go along.

Now to find a way to fit "dask" and "dosk" in your comment somewhere...

Perhaps this? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/science/may-britt-and-edva...

Also some videos linked in sidebar here: http://www.ntnu.edu/kavli/outreach

Their own review paper "Place cells, grid cells, and the brain's spatial representation system." gives a good overview of their research directions i believe. It can get pretty technical though, and it's behind a paywall:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18284371

See http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Grid_cells

Why was this down-voted? The article was written and curated by two of the Nobel Prize recipients!

I didn't downvote, but it would be nice to read what the link is about before clicking on it and why people should care.

"Here is the article by two of the Nobel Prize recipients. It's well written and quite accessible."

The early O'Keefe work was emulated in Robotics in RatSLAM (https://openslam.org/openratslam.html). These better cell models could potentially lead to better bio-mimicry in robotics.

Had lunch with the Mosers last year - they're both a model of humble brilliance, and it's inspiring to see something as unconventional as a wife and husband team as co-PI's. A highly unusual but extremely effective system!

Neuroscience shall be winning a fair share of the Medicine Nobels in the future. Well-earned.

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine GPS? NONSENSE! Be curious! http://www.drturi.com/the-2014-nobel-prize-in-physiology-or-... RTpls

Hilarious site. It's always fun to step out of reality every once in a while.

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