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Nobel Prize Stories by High School Students- Dr. John O’Keefe -The Brain’s Positioning System -Medicine or Physiology 2014.
(This article is a summary of the full-length article Authored by Ms. Sahana Sundar, Jericho, USA. It’s one of the 14 Chapters written by high school students and published in the PATH TO NOBEL book).
The book can be purchased at -https://www.afhdusa.org/item/5/path-to-nobel
Ms. Sahana Sundar, an eighth grader at Jericho Middle School, New York, who is involved in various community and educational activities. She is a President’s Volunteer Service Gold Award recipient, a member of her school badminton team, a Girl Scout, a chess enthusiast, and an active community volunteer. She is also the New York Chapter Leader of the Girls Computing League and App Dev League, organizations that promote computer science in underrepresented communities.
The chapter then delves into the life and work of Dr. John O’Keefe, a neuroscientist and psychologist, who, along with his Nobel co-laureates, Professors Edvard and May-Britt Moser, conducted pioneering research on our built-in positioning system that enables us to orient ourselves in space and move around. This system is facilitated by “place cells” and “grid cells” in the hippocampus of the brain.
Born on November 18, 1939, in New York, O’Keefe initially dreamt of becoming an aircraft mechanic. However, his academic journey led him to study aeronautical engineering at New York University (NYU), philosophy of the mind at the City College of New York (CCNY), and later psychology at McGill University, Montreal. He received his doctorate in physiological psychology in 1967.
Dr. O’Keefe’s research focused on the amygdala and later, the hippocampus. He was particularly interested in rats with hippocampal damage, which led to significant changes in their behavior. His research identified that cell activity in specific areas of the hippocampus was due to the location of the animal within its habitat. This discovery of “place cells” was a significant breakthrough.
Dr. O’Keefe’s work was furthered by May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser, who discovered “grid cells” that provide additional information for cognitive mapping. The implications of this research are vast, particularly for understanding memory-loss conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.
In the future, the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour at University College London, where O’Keefe is the director, aims to deepen understanding of neural patterns and cell activity related to memory and behavior.
