Exploring the Sleeping Brain: Nobel Laureate Edvard Moser Announced as First Plenary Speaker for Sleep Europe 2026
We are pleased to announce Professor Edvard I. Moser, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine (2014), as the first confirmed speaker for Sleep Europe 2026, inaugurating a new plenary format for the upcoming edition of the Congress.
His research, conducted in long-term collaboration with Professor May-Britt Moser, has provided fundamental insight into the neural basis of spatial representation and memory. Together, they identified grid cells in the entorhinal cortex, establishing a framework for how the brain constructs internal maps of space.
In his plenary lecture, “Spatial Coding in the Brain: Insights from Wake and Sleep” , Prof. Moser will discuss how spatial representations persist across behavioural states and what this continuity reveals about the intrinsic organisation of neural circuits.
“The most important insight to me is that spatial representation continues during sleep, when animals are off-line and not moving around in a spatial environment,” says Prof. Moser. “This points to an internal origin of spatial representations. Activity moves around on an internal map – which, by the way, has the geometry of a torus. During exploration, this activity is driven by sensory inputs such as speed and direction. During sleep, some other signal must drive the activity, but it still moves smoothly across the internal spatial map. In this way, sleep studies can help identify the origin of spatial mapping – those components that we bring prior to experience.”
Recent advances in neural recording technologies, such as Neuropixels probes and two-photon miniscopes – which the Mosers and their group have participated in developing –are opening new possibilities for understanding these dynamics.
“The impact on studies of sleep may be similar to their impact on wake-state research,” he notes. “It becomes possible to study the dynamics of neural populations. Information is embedded in the combined activity of hundreds or thousands of cells, and this combinatorial code can only be revealed when we can record many neurons simultaneously. I am sure that population studies of sleep will uncover hidden algorithms in much the same way they have for spatial representation in awake animals.”
Through his lecture, Prof. Moser wants to invite the sleep community to look beyond single neurons and consider how neural population dynamics reveal the underlying principles of brain computation across both sleep and wakefulness.
“Studies of neural population dynamics reveal a whole new world of neural codes, which may underlie not only spatial representation and navigation but any function of the cortex – or brain circuits in general – whether during wakefulness or sleep.”
Professor Edvard I. Moser will deliver his plenary lecture, “Spatial Coding in the Brain: Insights from Wake and Sleep,” on Thursday, 22 October 2026, from 16:00 to 16:45 CEST, at Sleep Europe 2026 in Maastricht.
More programme announcements will follow in the coming weeks. Stay tuned! Follow ESRS on social media and subscribe to the newsletter available through the Scientific Programme page to receive first-hand updates on sessions, speakers, and highlights from the Congress.