Nobel medicine prize goes to 3 scientists for research into brain activity

 The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to three scientists working on the mechanisms the brain uses to switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells.

Karl Deisseroth, 54, Peter Hegemann, 71, and Georg Nagel, 73, have carried out research into light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. They are based at universities in Germany and the United States.

The Nobel Assembly lauded their work, writing on X that the method “is now being used in laboratories around the world to reveal the brain’s mysteries.”

Scientists Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the Nobel Prize in medicine for developing optogenetics to study brain activity. Pontus Lundahl/TT/TT News Agency via AP

The assembly said Deisseroth is based at Stanford University in California, while Hegemann is at Humboldt University in Berlin and Nagel at the University of Würzburg, also in Germany.

Thomas Perlmann, the secretary of the medicine committee, said he was able to reach all three winners by phone Monday. The Associated Press’ efforts to reach the winners were not immediately successful.

Optogenetics opened what the Nobel assembly called a new era in neuroscience, the discovery of a light-controlled switch to turn on and off nerve cells and circuits in the brain to better learn how it works — to start unraveling the pathways that lead to behavior and disease.

It started when Hegemann explored how a single-celled type of green algae can swim toward light. He and Nagel discovered a particular protein that, when illuminated by blue light, opens a channel to create an electrical impulse. Putting that protein into other cells makes them light-sensitive.

Deisseroth then worked with the gene that controls that protein to create a light-controlled switch for nerve cells in the brains of living mice.

Medicine prize kicks off Nobels week

Karolinska Institute neuroscience professor Abdel El Manira speaks in front of a screen displaying an illustration of the human brain during the announcement of the winners of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, on Oct. 5, 2026. AFP via Getty Images

The prize was announced at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, kicking off Nobels week.

The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million).

Last year, the prize went to three scientists researching the immune system.

Monday’s medicine prize is followed by the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday.

After Friday’s peace prize is awarded, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced on Oct. 12.

The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, small group of laureates or organization.