Health and Medicine
PUBLISHED
The winners of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine are Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel. They were awarded the prestigious prize for discoveries leading to the development of optogenetics, a method “now being used in laboratories around the world to reveal the brain’s mysteries."
Optogenetics is a biological technique that merges genetic engineering with light pulses with millisecond precision. It has allowed scientists to control the activity of specific cells, most often neurons, crucial cells in the brain and nervous system.
The research has been seen as fundamental to unlocking some of the mysteries of how our brains work (many others still enduring). Understanding how the brain encodes memories, develops feelings, or produces behavior passes through those neurons. The understanding of their functioning now passes through optogenetics.
“Optogenetics provides opportunities for mapping the brain in a way that we could once only dream of,” Per Svenningsson, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, said in a statement.
The technique has been used to identify which neurons regulate thirst in the brain, to uncover the mechanism that helps us handle surprises, and the brain circuit for male libido in mice (which humans might have too).
It has been used – again in mice – to reactivate forgotten memories, restore sight, and even to treat epilepsy. It has also been used to make a certain type of worm be able to convert light directly into energy, which slowed down their ageing.
The prize is worth 12 million Swedish kronor (around $1.2 million at the time of publication), which will be shared equally between the winners.
In the early 2000s, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel discovered the protein called channelrhodopsin in a single-celled alga. They were interested in how this single-celled alga was able to swim towards light sources.
Following that discovery, in 2005, Karl Deisseroth worked out how to introduce a gene that could place this protein into nerve cells. This made channelrhodopsin into a light-controlled switch for nerve cells, allowing scientists to turn them on and off at will.
Over the last two decades, the field of optogenetics went from an idea to a widespread technique that, on a day-to-day basis, expands what we know about the nervous system and the brain. While mysteries remain, the development of the technique was a true paradigm shift in neuroscience.
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