American-British scientist John O'Keefe and Norwegians May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser on Monday (October 6) won the 2014 Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering the brain's "inner GPS" that makes it possible to orient ourselves in space and help understand diseases like Alzheimer's.

"The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute has today decided to award the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with one half to John O'Keefe and the other half jointly to May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain," the Nobel Committee secretary Goran Hansson said, announcing the prize.

The Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute said in a statement when awarding the prize of 8 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million) that the discoveries had solved a problem that had "occupied philosophers and scientists for centuries".

"This prize was given to three persons who have discovered what we call our positioning system in the brain, like an inner GPS that allows us to find our way and to know where we are in the room," Professor of Neurosciences and member of the Nobel Committee Ole Kiehn said after the announcement.

The Nobel Assembly said knowledge about the brain's positioning system may help to understand the "mechanism underpinning the devastating spatial loss" that affected people with Alzheimer's disease.

Kiehn said it was an important discovery but declined to speculate on future applications of the science.

"I think it's important for everybody to be able to sense where they are and also to find their way. There are diseases in the brain, for example Alzheimer's disease, where you loose that possibility - one of the first symptoms is that you cannot find your way or you cannot know, you don't recognise your own environment," he said.

The Mosers join an exclusive club of married couples to win a Nobel Prize that includes scientific greats Pierre Curie and Marie Curie.

O'Keefe is director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in Neural Circuits and Behaviour at University College London. The Mosers are both based in scientific institutes in the Norwegian town of Trondheim.

Medicine is the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year. Prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901 in accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel.

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