2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Awarded to Americans and German for Controlling Brain Cells with Light

The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel in recognition of their discoveries concerning ion channels that respond to light and the development of the technique of optogenetics. This technique enables the control of the activity of specific cells, particularly neurons, by making them genetically sensitive to light, thereby providing researchers with a highly precise tool for studying brain function and neural circuits and opening new avenues for understanding various neurological disorders and developing future treatments. Karl Deisseroth is a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and bioengineer at Stanford University in the United States and is considered one of the leading figures who developed optogenetics and transformed it into a tool capable of controlling specific neurons using light. Peter Hegemann is a biophysicist at Humboldt University in Berlin, whose research focused on light-sensitive proteins in microorganisms, and he contributed to uncovering the properties of “channelrhodopsins,” which became the foundation of this technique. Georg Nagel is a professor at the University of Würzburg in Germany and was among the pioneers in identifying and characterizing ion channels activated by light. The work of the three scientists converged to establish the field of optogenetics, which has enabled researchers to activate or silence neurons with light and study neural circuits with unprecedented precision. Hegemann and Nagel contributed to the discovery of light-sensitive molecular tools, while Deisseroth was among the leading figures who transformed these tools into a technology for precisely controlling neuronal activity.