John O’Keefe (Photo: David Bishop, UCL, source)
McGill graduate John O’Keefe won the 2014 Nobel prize in medicine for his discovery in 1974 of brain cells that makes it possible for us to orient ourselves, acting like inner-GPS. Professor O’Keefe earned his phD at McGill in 1967 in physiological psychology.
In 1971 O’Keefe was part of a team that discovered a type of nerve cells which only activated when a rat was in a specific location in a room. He shares the Nobel prize with a Norwegian couple of researchers, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser.
Professor O’Keefe is now director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in Neural Circuits and Behaviour at University College London.
