Scientific research begins with a step-by-step process: asking a question, testing the hypothesis, disproving it (or not), and moving on to the next experiment. Sometimes, this path can surprise you with an innovative discovery that can – with a little luck – change some scientific paradigms.
“We start a lot of projects that go nowhere and you have to reverse course. That’s part of the nature of science: if you want to make great discoveries, you also have to take some risks. The challenge is to recognize when your project has reached a dead end before it’s too late.”
This is the advice of Edvard Moser, a neuroscientist and professor at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, in Trondheim (Norway), to young people interested in doing science. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2014.
Moser came to Brazil this week at the invitation of the Nobel Prize Inspiration Initiative (NPII), a global Nobel Prize outreach initiative, which connects laureates with students, and is sponsored by AstraZeneca. After a busy schedule in São Paulo, including a conference in partnership with the University of the South Pacific and a lecture at Unifesp (Federal University of São Paulo), he spoke last Tuesday (25) with the reporter via video.
After nearly three decades of so-called “basic” research, in which he sought to understand the cognitive underpinnings of brain development through experiments on mice in the laboratory, he and his ex-wife, May-Britt Moser — who shared the Nobel Prize with her former partner and American John O’Keefe — made a surprising discovery: a new type of neuron, called grid cells.
Grid cells, also found in humans and many other mammals, are located in the hippocampus and indicate spatial location, acting as the brain’s “global positioning system (GPS).” They got their name because the rat experiment used a map resembling a Chinese chessboard (hexagon). When passing through points on this map indicating the specific location, cells in the rodents’ brains were activated. A few years later, the Mosers saw that it defined not only place but also time.
Moser’s research has paved the way for a number of applications, such as explaining why people with Alzheimer’s disease often don’t know where they are or mess up their appointments. But investigating cognitive loss and what it does to a patient with a neurological condition was never the ultimate goal of his studies.
“Long before Alzheimer’s disease or the condition manifests itself in amnesia, we had already observed deterioration in the area of the brain where these cells are located, which may indicate that loss of memory and sense of space occurs before the disease develops,” he says. “The area becomes progressively smaller due to cell death. We don’t know exactly what makes this area particularly vulnerable, but there are several lines of research that can be explored now.”
On the one hand, if great discoveries can take years to emerge, on the other hand, it is necessary to have continuous investment in basic science, without which technological innovations and applications cannot be achieved, says the neuroscientist.
“When there are ups and downs, it becomes harmful to science in the long term. You need to plan many years ahead, and when cuts happen, like the ones we are seeing now in the United States, they are very harmful, because they interrupt programs that have been going on for years, you lose qualified labor, and most importantly, you lose the value of science.”
Although, according to the researcher, there was strong pressure from funding agencies for practical results, it was a combination of “luck” and “knowing how to sell your fish” that led to them receiving funding from the Norwegian government for their research. “I think that, given the tools available at the time, we made some smart and lucky choices that made it possible to find these cells,” he says.
Yes, it must be said that the discovery of the brain’s geographic mapping system is fundamental to explaining behaviors and also how certain lifestyle habits can accelerate cognitive decline. It is also not a common discovery, but the result of years of investment in research. “Today the toolkit is much larger, so you can get a lot more data. You can train networks to look for patterns in the brain, and you can study cellular cognition at the level of neural populations, not just single cells.”
For those who want to keep their brain healthy, the neuroscientist jokes: “Enrichment and diversification of activities is the best way to keep the brain fit. An active person, who does different tasks, is likely to have a more robust brain and be more protected against neurodegenerative diseases, because you have more connections between cells,” he sums up: “Well, maybe not just scrolling on Instagram, but also mixing it up by reading more complex texts, for longer than ten seconds.”
Finally, Moser has a message for boys and girls who want to pursue a career in science. “If you’re interested in how things work, pursue a career in science. But you have to choose a field that suits you. Science should be fun, it should be happiness. This increases your chances of success in getting a grant and eventually finding a job.”
X-rays
Edward Moser, 63, was born in Ålesund, Norway. In 1990 he graduated in psychology from the University of Oslo, and in 1995 he obtained a doctorate in neurophysiology from the same institution. He is Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in Trondheim.