your majesties,your royal highnesses,your excellencies,ladies and gentlemen

on behalf of my colleagues may-britt and edvard moser, and myself, i would like to express ourgratitude to the nobel foundation for hosting this magnificent banquet. i would also like toexpress our gratitude to the nobel committee and assembly for deeming our research worthyof this distinguished accolade. i think it’s fair to say that the nobel prize is the highest honorany scientist or artist can achieve. we are pleased and delighted.

we see the awards as a recognition not only of ourselves and our accomplishments but also ofour collaborators in the study of the spatial functions of the hippocampus, and our colleagues inthe wider field of cognitive and behavioural neuroscience. cognitive neuroscience is entering anexciting era in which new technologies and ideas are making it possible to study the neuralbasis of cognition, perception, memory and emotion at the level of networks of interactingneurons, the level at which we believe many of the important operations of the brain take know a considerable amount about how individual neurons work and how two cells cancommunicate with each other but the way in which entire networks of hundreds andthousands of neurons cooperate, interact with each other, and are orchestrated to create ourideas and concepts is an underexplored area of neuroscience. it is probably at this level thatnetwork failure occurs and leads to some of our most disturbing and intractable diseases ofthe mind and brain.

this new area of neuroscience has been made possible by the development of new optical,computer-based electronic, and molecular biological tools which will allow us tomonitor theactivity of many thousands of cells simultaneously and to manipulate their activity. we willmove from looking at correlations between brain activity and behaviour to studying how thebrain causes mental states and behaviour. it is fitting therefore that our fellow laureates thisyear in physics and chemistry are world’s leaders in providing us with some of these tools. weare eager to begin to use some of the laser-based optical techniques being developed by ourchemistry co- laureates.

we are also pleased to be receiving the prize with laureates from so many different e is the quintessential international endeavour and the sterling reputation of the nobelawards is partly due to the widely-perceived lack of national and other biases in the selection ofthe laureates. we believe that the future great contributions to our understanding of thebiological and physical world can come from citizens of any country in any part of the world. it isto the credit of the nobel committees that they have steadfastly endeavoured to follow alfrednobel’s wishes that the prizes recognise contributions to the welfare of humanity regardless ofcountry of origin, gender, race or religious affiliation.

i want to end by recognising and thanking our many collaborators and colleagues toonumerous to mention in this short speech, our universities, ucl and ntnu, and our generousfunders.

thank you for your attention. tack.