身在何处——2014年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖介绍

Where am I——Introduction to the research works of 2014 Nobel Prize Winner in Physiology or Medicine

首先简要介绍2014年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖三位获奖者(John M.O’Keefe,Edvard I.Moser和May-Britt Moser)的学术生涯。然后详细介绍他们获奖的主要成就:O’keefe教授在20世纪70年代发现鼠海马上神经细胞对动物所处的位置敏感,因此命名为位置细胞;而后Moser夫妇在鼠脑的内嗅皮质中发现栅格细胞,它的感受野呈现有规律的三角形网格覆盖整个环境,从而认为这些细胞组织成动物导航系统的神经机制具有可能性。最后指出,由于脑科学研究的复杂性,这些研究工作仅是动物导航行为探究中的重大突破,离开彻底解决这个问题尚有距离。

At first the academic careers of 2014 Nobel Prize Winner （John M. O’Keefe, Edvard I. Moser and May-Britt Moser） are introduced briefly in this paper. In the 1970’s O’Keefe found that the neural cells in hippocampus of rat brain are sensitive to the position of the animal so named place cell. Then E. Moser and M. Moser discovered that grid cells of the rat entorhinal cortex show receptive field with regular triangle pattern. These cells may be organized in rat brain to perform navigation behavior in environment. At last, because of the complexity of brain science we point out that there are still long way to go to solve the problem of animal navigation absolutely.