The place cells were shown to generate firing fields (areas with concentrated firing activity) each time the animal crossed the specific spot, which he called a place field (Figure 2).įig.1.
![hippocampus anatomy video hippocampus anatomy video](https://www.mdpi.com/biomolecules/biomolecules-10-00160/article_deploy/html/images/biomolecules-10-00160-g003.png)
He called this special group of cells place cells. His experiments revealed that every time a rat crossed a specific landmark known to the animal, particular cells located in the hippocampus (see Figure 1 for location of hypothalamus) fired. O’Keefe took a neurophysiological approach and in his experiments he inserted an electrode into a rat’s brain and recorded the activity of the neurons in that particular brain area. But it wasn’t until the discovery of special brain cells called place cells ( O’Keefe and Dastrovsky 1971) that the idea of the brain’s GPS was found to be a reality. The idea that our brains might have a spatial map of our environment was proposed long ago ( Tolman 1948). How does this so-called inner or brain positioning system work? How are we integrating the information about already known locations when we move into a new space? Does the brain have a map? Is it like a cartographic map with information only about landmarks? Or a cognitive map with topological data that allow us to make meaningful connections between the landmarks? Fortunately for us, rats provide a lot of answers to these questions. In short, these neuroscientists have shown that there is a global positioning system (GPS) in the brain.
#HIPPOCAMPUS ANATOMY VIDEO HOW TO#
Sixty-five years later, the work that earned this most recent Nobel Prize now allows us to understand how individual cells in the brain lay out a map to let us understand where we are in space and how to negotiate our ways through known and unknown territories. The last time a Nobel Prize was awarded for brain research was in 1949 to Walter Hess for his work on mapping and localizing the parts of the brain that are responsible for various autonomic functions of the body. Moser for their discovery and characterization of brain cells that are responsible for navigation.
![hippocampus anatomy video hippocampus anatomy video](https://static.tweaktown.com/news/5/0/50566_1_brain-store-1-petabyte-memories-13-years-hd-video_full.jpg)
This year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to three neuroscientists, John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and Edvard I.
![hippocampus anatomy video hippocampus anatomy video](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bLHutEdVEH4/maxresdefault.jpg)
Ever gotten lost and had to find your way back? How do we know where we are while venturing into a new space? What is that “déjà vu” moment we experience when we navigate our way into a previously visited space? It’s all in the brain, as they say.