Good news: Your brain is still smarter than your phone

This week, three brain researchers, John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and her husband Edvard Moser have won a Nobel Prize for discovering that mice navigate using grid cells in the brain.

But as O’Keefe found, it’s not just mice.

“When a cab drivers is trying to plan a route and to find a route […] this part of the brain lights up and stays active as long as they’re planning the route,” explained O’Keefe.

As the Mosers discovered, the grid that the brain creates is not an ordinary grid. It’s laid out, not in squares, but in equilateral triangles.

“Somewhat simplified, it is like a graphics paper that you can use to plot in every position in the environment.”

So as we speak, the grid cells in your brain have mapped the space around you as a series of triangles. And as you move, these grid cells are sending your location to what are called “place” cells that remember whatever happens to you.

So whatever you experience is linked to the spot where it happened.

“Place cells also contain memory. This interview, what you had for breakfast and then you put your memories in the map,” explained May-Britt Moser. “This interaction between space and memory is extremely exciting.”

That’s why you associate smells and music with where you were when you experienced them.

… And why three scientists with million dollar checks will never forget where they were last Monday.