2014 Nobel Prize

We move along the surface of a doughnut

Researchers have gained a first insight into how the brain structures higher-level information. By extracting and analysing data from a neural network of grid cells, they found that the collective neural activity is shaped like the surface of a doughnut. The study, from NTNU’s Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and collaborators, is published in Nature.

May-Britt Moser, Johan Magnus Elvemo og Bertil Palma r Johansen diskuterer "My Running Rat". Foto: Idun Haugan, NTNU

Rock-and-roll running rats

Composer Bertil Palmar Johansen calls the rats Gjertrud and Hjørdis “rock-and-roll rats” because they’re so cool. They also star in a new art video about neurological research. The music to the video is built on the sound of brain cell signals from May-Britt Moser’s rats.

Many memories, many rooms

2014 NOBEL PRIZE: The brain has an enormous capacity to store memories and to keep memories from getting mixed up in part because of how these memories are stored in the hippocampus, researchers from NTNU’s Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience have shown.

2014 Nobel Prize

Nobel lectures touch on central discoveries and tantalizing findings

2014 NOBEL PRIZE: Nobel Laureates and neuroscientists May-Britt and Edvard Moser described how they made their prize-winning discovery in their Nobel lectures on Sunday 7 December. They also gave the audience a tantalizing glimpse into new findings, including the existence of speed cells in the brain, and how odours and memory are linked.

A “wow” ending of fog, jazz poetry and a tuba

2014 NOBEL PRIZE: Edvard and May-Britt Moser finished their Nobel lecture with a music video where NTNU music professors improvised over a Norwegian folk tune. The video was filmed in a dense fog where viewers see the faces of the musicians as they play.

A village of neuroscientists

2014 NOBEL PRIZE — There’s a proverb – the origins of which are hotly disputed – that says “It takes a village to raise a child.” You could almost say the same thing about groundbreaking discoveries in neuroscience, if NTNU’s Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience/Centre for Neural Computation (KI/CNC) is any example.

Hjerneforskerne May-Britt og Edvard Moser.

From bomb shelter beginnings to the Nobel Prize

2014 NOBEL PRIZE — Nearly all innovations have founder myths, like the apocryphal garage where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are said to have developed the Apple Computer. But two innovative neuroscientists in Trondheim really did start their research in the university equivalent of a garage – a bomb shelter – and then went on to build a world-class laboratory and win the Nobel Prize.

A “light switch” in the brain illuminates neural networks

Researchers from NTNU’s Kavli Institute of Systems Neuroscience are now able to see which cells communicate with each other in the brain by flipping a neural light switch. The results of their efforts are presented in an article in the 5 April 2013issue of Science magazine.

The many maps of the brain

Your brain has at least four different senses of location – and perhaps as many as 10. And each is different, according to new research from NTNU’s Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience.