HomeDate: 2026-03-12
Speaker: Dr. Edvard I. Moser (2014 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine)
Host: Dr. James C. Liao, President of Academia Sinica
Time: March 27, 2026, Friday, 14:00
Venue: Auditorium B1C, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica
Online Registration
https://forms.gle/WCcDYFRwzDnFSDuq8
Government employees participating in the lecture will receive certification for lifelong learning and 2 hours of study credit.
Contact:
Mr. Chang, Department of International Affairs, Academia Sinica
Tel: (02) 2789-9895
Lecture Synopsis:
This lecture will focus on how the mammalian brain encodes space and time. Few brain functions are more critical to survival than the ability to organize space and time. Professor Moser will begin with the Nobel- awarded discoveries on space. The entorhinal cortex of the mammalian brain contains specialized position-coding cell types, including grid cells.
Grid cells are active only when animals (and humans) are at certain locations, locations that tile environments in a periodic hexagonal pattern. Together with other specialized cell types in the entorhinal region, grid cells enable a dynamic GPS-like map of our own location in the environment.
In the second part of the lecture Professor Moser will switch to time and show how time can be inferred from the joint activity of cells in a different region of the entorhinal cortex, suggesting that this entire brain system is adapted for encoding both the wheres and the whens of experience, in agreement with the now common view that deficits in the function of the entorhinal system are at the core of neurological diseases where orientation in space and time is affected, such as in Alzheimer’s disease.
