Update at 7:05 a.m. ET
Three neuroscientists from Europe will share the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of how the brain determines where the body is in space.
John O'Keefe, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London, will get half of the prize 8 million Swedish crown prize and May-Britt Moser and her husband, Edvard Moser, of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, will split the remainder.
Nobelprize.org says of the winners:
"This is something that philosophers and brain scientists had speculated about for hundreds of years," NPR's Rob Stein says.
"The committee said the discovery of the brain's GPS system really represented a paradigm shift in how specialized cells in the brain work together to create complicated thinking abilities," Rob says. "It really opened up whole new areas in how our brains work in creating things like memory and planning."
The Associated Press says: "This 'inner GPS' helps explain how the brain creates "a map of the space surrounding us and how we can navigate our way through a complex environment," the Nobel Assembly said.
The Nobel awards in physics, chemistry, literature and peace will be announced later this week. The economics prize will be announced next Monday, according to the AP.
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