The story of May-Britt Moser and her burning desire to understand the brain
Introduction to May-Britt Moser
**May-Britt Moser** is a Norwegian neuroscientist who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2014 for her groundbreaking work in **understanding cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain**. Moser’s discovery has allowed new insight into cognitive processes and neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Moser obtained her PhD in neuropsychology from the University of Oslo in 1995 and, together with her husband, Edvard Moser, founded the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, a leading research center aiming to understand the emergence of high-level brain functions.
Moser’s Early Life
Moser was born in Fosnavåg, Norway, in 1963 and was the youngest of 5 children. Her family owned a small farm, and she spent her summers studying and looking after the animals.
At school, Moser wasn’t particularly academic but, with the encouragement of her mother and teachers, her talents started coming through. Moser’s dream was to “become a doctor and save the world,” but in high school she didn’t have the drive to get the grades she needed for medical school. However, once her mother warned her that if she didn’t do well, she would end up a ‘housewife,’ Moser was “horrified” and was motivated to succeed.
Moser’s Education & Research
Moser decided to attend Oslo University because her 2 older sisters lived in the city. There she studied **mathematics, psychology**, and **neurobiology**. Still unsure of what to do with her degree, she declined a place at dentistry school.
Everything changed when she met Edvard Moser, who would later become her husband. Their common desire to study and understand the brain brought them together and changed Moser’s trajectory. “I was in heaven,” said Moser. “We simply burned with eagerness to understand the brain.”
Moser decided to pursue the study of **brain-behavior relationships**. In the early 1990s, she worked alongside her husband in the laboratory of Norwegian researcher Per Oskar Andersen to earn her master’s degree.
Moser’s thesis, which was published in The Journal of Neuroscience, focused on the 2 parts of the **hippocampus – the dorsal part and the ventral part**. The hippocampus is the part of the brain responsible for **emotion, memory**, and **the autonomic nervous system**.
Moser examined how each part of the **hippocampus** affected **spatial learning and memory**, concluding from her studies on rats that it was only the dorsal part that was involved. The dorsal part of the hippocampus is responsible for cognitive function such as memory and learning, whereas the ventral part is involved in emotional behaviors.
Moser continued her research on correlations between hippocampus and learning, earning her PhD in Neurophysiology in 1995.
Moser’s Career
During her PhD work, Moser and her husband traveled to Edinburgh to train with Richard Morris at the **Center of Neuroscience, University of Edinburgh**. In 1995, they spent time in London as visiting postdoctoral fellows at the laboratory of prominent neuroscientist John O’Keefe at the University College London (UCL). While they only spent a very short time there, Moser said it was “absolutely formative for [their] future.”
In 1996, she became assistant professor in biological psychology at the Department of Psychology of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim and was later made full professor of neuroscience in 2000.
Moser and her husband were instrumental in establishing the Center for the Biology of Memory in 2002, as well as the Institute for Systems Neuroscience in 2007, both within NTNU.
In 2007, the Kavli Foundation, which supports the “advancement of science for the benefit of humanity” and is based in LA, California, selected the Moser lab as the 4th Kavli Neuroscience Institute. This award would provide them funding for basic research in perpetuity.
Moser & Grid Cells
In 2005, Moser and her team discovered **a new type of cells in the entorhinal cortex of the brain, which they named grid cells**. The **entorhinal cortex** is the part of the brain that acts as a hub for memory, navigation, and the perception of time. It is found within the **medial temporal lobe** – the part of the brain that holds anatomically-related structures that are essential for declarative memory, and it connects the hippocampus to the neocortex which is concerned with sight and hearing.
The significance of this discovery is best described by Moser herself: “…for the first time, we were able to see how the brain takes complex information … to generate its own internal code to make use of that information.”
The discovery of these grid cells located close to the hippocampus gave scientists access to further knowledge and understanding into the cognitive processes and spatial deficits associated with human neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Moser’s Awards & Recognitions
Moser’s groundbreaking work has earned her memberships with the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, the American Philosophical Society, and the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences.
She has received numerous awards, including the 28th annual W. Alden Spencer Award by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in 2005 and the Körber European Science Prize in 2014, which honors outstanding scientists working in Europe for their promising research projects.
In 2014, Moser, along with her husband, co-received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain.”
“Through hard work and persistence together with fantastic colleagues, I have worked towards my dreams and vision from my childhood: to understand how the neural activity in the brain generates behavior and cognition,” said Moser following her win.
