When you release a carrier pigeon into the air, how does it know its way home?

How do we navigate city streets without getting lost?

John O'Keefe has found the very cells in the brain that help animals and humans know

where they are in space.

In 2014, he shared the Cavley Prize in Neuroscience with Brenda Milner and Marcus Raichel for their

work uncovering the special networks in our brains that deal with memory and learning.

That same year, he also won the Nobel Prize.

Scientific American Custom Media in partnership with the Cavley Prize spoke with John about

his research and the future of the field.

John O'Keefe would stay in school forever if he could.

In fact, he tried.

After struggling to pay for a degree in aerospace engineering, he managed to get into the city

college of New York.

I was like a child in a candy factory.

John, I just loved every moment.

I took courses in filmmaking, I took courses in English literature, I took courses in physics,

I took courses in engineering, and I took psychology and philosophy courses.

But his studies at the college eventually had to end.

And this didn't call me in and said, you can't just keep taking courses for the rest of

your life.

You're going to have to go back.

Neuroscience wasn't even a word until the year John graduated, but he'd already had

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