US AND GERMAN SCIENTISTS WIN NOBEL MEDICINE PRIZE FOR WORK ON LIGHT AND BRAIN
American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for developing optogenetics, a technique that uses light to control individual nerve cells in the brain. The Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institutet said Deisseroth, 54; Hegemann, 71; and Nagel, 73, had been selected for their "discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics."
"This method 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 Karolinska Institutet. Anna Wedell, a professor in genetics and a member of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, said a new era in neuroscience had opened but it was only the beginning. "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 trio will share a prize sum of 12 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million). Announcements will follow in the coming days on this year's Nobel physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics prizes, with the winner or winners of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to be announced on Friday.
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