A British research team won a pretty hefty award for their work on the human brain.  The Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize - also known as The Brain Prize - is a relatively new honor for outstanding contribution to European neuroscience.

Tim Bliss, Graham Collingridge, and Richard Morris will split a purse of One Million Euros - about AU$1.5 Million - for revealing how strengthened connections between brain cells can store our memories.

"Before this team got going, we had some idea about particular areas of the brain that might be involved in memory," said Professor Morris of the University of Edinburgh, "but what we didn't have was any real understanding of how it worked."

What they discovered was that "memories change the brain - the brain is plastic", according to Professor Bliss, who is affiliated with the Francis Crick Institute.  "If nerve cell A is connected to nerve cell B, and A takes part in firing B, then the synapse - the connection between A and B - will be strengthened," he explained.  Bliss and a Norwegian colleague - Terje Lomo - were the first to observe it happening inside the brain and authored a pioneering study in the 1970s.

Professor Collingridge of the University of Toronto followed up and worked on finding the specific molecules responsible.  Morris then demonstrated that the molecular systems identified by Collingridge were crucial for memories to form.

The three men spoke frequently, but never worked together in the same lab.  Rather, they each played key roles in continuing a line of research to make the discovery.

The Brain Prize is a relatively new entry into the world of research awards.  It was established in 2011, and this is the sixth year of awards.