21 Oct 2026
At the October 21, 2026, LUMINAI Public Lecture, Professor Edvard I. Moser, 2014 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine and Professor of Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), explored how the brain represents space, encodes time, and forms memories from experience. Drawing on his pioneering work on place cells and grid cells, Prof. Moser explained how these systems support navigation and help organize experience. He also discussed their relevance to Alzheimer’s disease and the questions neuroscience raises for artificial intelligence.
How the Brain Builds an Internal Map
How does the brain keep track of where we are? Research on place cells and grid cells has helped answer this question.
Place cells in the hippocampus respond when an animal is in a particular location, while grid cells in the entorhinal cortex become active in repeating patterns across an environment. Working together, these cells help the brain build an internal map of its surroundings, often compared to a GPS.
But this map does more than track location. Prof. Moser showed that patterns of brain activity can extend toward places an animal might move next, sometimes before it turns toward a target. This suggests that the brain’s internal map helps guide attention and prepare for movement. Advances in neural recording now allow scientists to track thousands of neurons simultaneously, revealing more about how these cells work together.
How the Brain Experiences Time and Forms Memories
Remembering an experience involves more than knowing where it happened. We also need to remember when it happened and how it relates to other events.
Prof. Moser explained that brain activity changes over time, but not like a clock ticking at a steady pace. Important events can accelerate these changes, while quieter moments may slow them down. Our sense of time is shaped by what we experience, not just by how many seconds pass.
During the Q&A, Prof. Moser compared waiting for a bus that never arrives with spending time with friends. As he put it, “the brain is also not a camera.” Rather than recording every experience exactly as it happened, the brain reconstructs memories and our sense of time from the information available to us.
These findings are also relevant to Alzheimer’s disease. The hippocampus and entorhinal cortex support memory and spatial navigation, and both are affected by the disease. Understanding how these regions work may help scientists better understand the memory loss and disorientation associated with Alzheimer’s.
What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About AI
The lecture also explored what artificial intelligence might learn from the brain. Both biological and artificial neural networks rely on connections between individual units, but the brain’s connections are shaped by early development and experience. Prof. Moser suggested that understanding how these connections adapt through interaction with the environment could offer useful ideas for AI systems.
Students also asked whether ideas from spatial navigation could help explain abstract thought and whether AI could replace traditional research methods in the life sciences. Prof. Moser described the application of spatial mapping to more abstract forms of thinking as an intriguing but still speculative research direction.
On AI’s role in scientific research, his message was clear: “you still need to observe behavior.” AI can help scientists analyze large amounts of neural data and identify patterns that might otherwise be difficult to detect. But understanding how the brain works still requires observing living animals and examining how their behavior relates to neural activity. Computational tools can extend what scientists can investigate, but they cannot replace direct observation. The challenge is to use AI to extend what experiments can reveal without losing sight of the living behavior they are meant to explain.