Stockholm, Oct 6: American scientist Karl Deisseroth and German researchers Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries that enabled scientists to control individual nerve cells in the brain using light.
The Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said the trio was honoured for their “discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics”. They will share the prize of 12 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million).
The technique, known as optogenetics, allows researchers to switch individual nerve cells on or off in a living brain, opening new ways of studying how the brain processes information and how neurons communicate.
“This method (optogenetics) makes it possible to switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute.
“This method is now being used in laboratories around the world to reveal the brain’s mysteries,” he said.
Anna Wedell, a professor of genetics and member of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, said the discovery had ushered in a new era in neuroscience.
“For the first time we can actually start to understand how the brain processes information and how different neurons interact across the brain,” she said.
The research traces back to the early 1990s, when Hegemann studied how single-celled green algae respond to light. Hegemann and Nagel identified a protein that opens a channel when exposed to blue light, generating an electrical impulse. Introducing the protein into other cells made them responsive to light.
Deisseroth later used the gene responsible for the protein to develop a light-controlled mechanism for activating or silencing nerve cells in the brains of living mice, laying the foundation for optogenetics as a widely used neuroscience research tool.
Deisseroth, 54, is based at Stanford University in California, while Hegemann, 71, is affiliated with Humboldt University in Berlin and Nagel, 73, with the University of Würzburg in Germany.
Deisseroth’s wife, Michelle Monje-Deisseroth, a researcher known for her work on brain cancers, said the couple were asleep when the Karolinska Institute called to inform them of the award.
The Nobel announcements will continue in the coming days with the prizes for physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics. The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize is scheduled to be announced on Friday.
Last year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three scientists for discoveries concerning the immune system.
