Place cells (episode 2)

Last week to the Royal Institution to hear about how our brains map the world from John O'Keefe, a very sprightly scientist of near 80 years. A half Nobel laureate.

Fine warm evening with Southwestern Trains on the blink, so I was reduced to going to Victoria on a train described as missing out on Ewell East and fast from Carshalton. In the event, slow from Clapham Junction; about par for the course for Southern. Concourse for Victoria tube very crowded, as were the platforms. Plus a much longer walk than I remember to get onto the Victoria Line; maybe something to do with rebuilding escalators. With the result was that I forget that I was only going one stop and so had a long change at Oxford Circus. Probably still faster than walking.

Rolls Royce in Davies Street with a plaque minéralogique of '800'. With plaque minéralogique being what Simenon likes to call number plates, from the Ministry of Mines, responsible in France for such matters until 1929. Sadly Larousse does not explain the connection. While I did not know that one could have a registration mark in this country consisting of three numbers. The driver looked as if he might have come from somewhere near the Persian Gulf, which led me to wonder what the Saudis call the Persian Gulf, given that the Persians are their sworn enemies. Much worse than us and the French.

Next stop Mazzoleni in Albemarle Street, where the display containing the rusting pipe art noticed at reference 1 had changed slightly, with something new behind and the work itself augmented with a short length of white pipe. There was a girl behind the counter, but the door was locked so I was unable to find out about the provenance or the asking price.

Despite all this excitement, I made to the upstairs bar in the Goat by 1830, clutching the regulation glass of 'Quickie' from Australia.

Lecture theatre more or less full and O'Keefe turned out to be a really good talker - and I shall report on the talk itself in due course. Out of deference perhaps to his Nobel status, the RI skipped the usual introductions and just let him get on with it, with the director himself acting as question master at the end. He had an odd accent - the product of being born in New York of Irish stock, followed by college in Montreal and then a long stint at our UCL, where he remains today. He came across as a modest sort of chap, careful to give a lot of his colleagues a mention, including them in slides as appropriate.

The talk was mainly about place cells and their friends in the hippocampus, but he closed with a short digression on Alzheimer's, progress of which could be mapped out by the destruction radiating out, possibly along synaptic paths, from the hippocampus. With something about all this to be found at reference 4. By way of appetizer for the main subject of the talk, I offer the frequently recycled fact that the relevant part of the a London taxi driver's hippocampus is enlarged, reflecting his professional interest in location. An enlargement which might fade away with the replacement of 'The Knowledge' by sat navs and which fades away anyway on retirement. See reference 3.

Much excited by all this, straight home to write up my notes before they vanished, before taking any supplementary beverages.

PS: I phoned the gallery this afternoon, to learn that the big pipe, little pipe and rope were a work by an Italian by the name of Gianni Caravaggio and I could have it for around £25,000. And the words snapped above are about to appear in an important art journal.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/02/forensic-anthropology.html.

Reference 2: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianni_Caravaggio.

Reference 3: https://www.theknowledgetaxi.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/research/our-research/research-projects/how-does-tau-hallmark-alzheimers-disease-affect-connections-between-brain-cells.

Group search key: jka.