The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to three scientists at once

The Nobel laureates of this year for physiology or medicine were named in Stockholm on October 6. They are Anglo-American scientist John O’Keefe and a couple from Norway, May-Britt and Edvard Moser, Reuters reports. Half of the prize has been awarded to O’Keefe, while another half has gone to the Norwegian pair.

The scientists have been awarded the prize for their research in the field of neurophysiology, in particular for studying neuronal networks and the brain’s internal positioning system. The subject of their research has been a kind of navigation or positioning system which exists in the human brain and is similar to the GPS. This very system allows animals and humans to understand where they are, as well as recognize a familiar path. O’Keefe discovered the first part of the system in 1971. His work showed that a set of nerve cells in a laboratory rat’s hippocampus became activated whenever the animal was in one location in a room. A different set of cells were active when it   was in a different area. The researcher concluded that these “place neurons” formed a map of the room.