The Women Who Shaped Today's Science: May-Britt Moser

April 12, 2023

Ashlyn Tsang, Maya Puterman, Noa Essner

10th Grade

May-Britt Moser is a Norwegian psychologist born in 1963 who is known for her groundbreaking work in studying brain cells. She grew up fascinated by plastic brains and received a strong education in science that fostered an eventual career studying psychology. Inspired by the empowering words and motivation of her teachers in elementary, middle, and high school, she became compelled and inspired to pursue a career in science. In college, she and her friend Edvard Moser published a research paper titled “The interactional effects of personality and gender in small groups: A missing perspective in research.” 

Though her research in psychology began by studying human awareness in relation to the human brain, it ended up evolving to be centered more primarily on rats. She conducted an experiment alongside Evard Moser, whom she later married. The experiment they ran tested hooded rats’ abilities (due to their sharper sense of sight compared to other species of rats) to navigate a water maze, which the two of them built themselves. She also devoted her time to researching the human brain’s structure and anatomy. This research allowed her to see how different adjustments to the rats’ brains, namely incisions on areas near the hippocampus (located by the brain’s temporal lobe that aids in function and memory) would impact their ability or inability to successfully escape the water maze. May-Britt Moser explained that “Once we did this, we found out that when the rats had a lesion in the dorsal part of the hippocampus they didn’t learn, but if they had a lesion in the ventral part they were fine – if we made large lesions in the ventral part they could still navigate perfectly well.” 

This experiment laid the foundation for her discovery of the active role the brain plays, on a cellular level, in making a person aware of their position and in cognitive function. In between graduating from college and founding the Centre for the Biology of Memory alongside her husband, she struggled to earn her Ph.D. Yet upon succeeding, she provided the field of psychology her invaluable contributions. Today, May-Britt Moser continues to work as a professor of psychology at the Norwegian University of Science, as well as leads its department in neural computation.