Monday, October 13, 2014

A Nobel Prize in Systems Neuroscience: The start of a new trend or rare occurrence?

Advances in our understanding of neuroscience have played an important role across the history of awarding the Nobel Prizes in physiology or medicine. However, of these Nobel prizes, only a few recognize discoveries that may be considered systems or behavioral level neuroscience. The 2014 award to John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser, “for their discoveries of cell cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain” is one of those rare occurrences, but is it a sign of a coming trend in future of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awards? Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded 105 times to 207 Nobel Laureates. Of these 105 awards, 24 have been awarded to neuroscience discoveries, with only 4 awards, 1949 for the discovery of the leucotomy, 1973 for the discovery of the organization and elicitation of individual and social behavioral patterns, 1981 for the discovery of hemispheric specialization, and 2014 awarded to systems or behavioral level neuroscience (the Nobel Prizes in Economic Sciences awarded in 2002 to Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith and 1978 to Herbert Simon could also qualify as a behavioral science award).

While the award to work in systems neuroscience may seem unusual, the wording of the award, physiology or medicine, has left considerable freedom for the Nobel Assembly at Krolinska Institutet to award this particular prize. Even looking at the winners from within neuroscience, the flexibility of this prize has been demonstrated with fields including zoology, diagnostic imaging and genetics.

Looking to the future of neuroscience and the Nobel Prize, does the 2014 award indicate a trend towards awards in systems or behavioral neuroscience? Major funding initiatives in the United States, the BRAIN Initiative and the Human Brian Project (HBP) in the European Union may indicate so. The may help shift the trend of Nobel Prizes in medicine for discoveries in neuroscience towards systems and behavioral level work. The HBP hopes to “simulate the brain” while the BRAIN project aims to discover “how individual cells and complex neural circuits interact in both time and space” (BrainInitiative, NIH).

Besides funding trends, the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience may very well serve as a bellwether to future Nobel Prizes having already served as a precursor award to three laureates (Thomas Sudhof and James Rothman – 2013 and John O’Keefe – 2014). It is encouraging to see systems neuroscience recognized for its benefit to mankind as complex human behavior often seems impervious to our understanding. Perhaps through new technologies and collaborative work from multiple disciplines we can begin to shed light on a number of other complex cognitive behaviors.