The researchers are receiving the prize for their work on optogenetics, “a method that makes it possible to show how nerve cells shape memories, emotions and behaviors in a living brain,” the Nobel Assembly writes in a press release.
Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Committee, got hold of the laureates on Monday morning.
The reaction was happy. They were surprised, and Karl Deisseroth, who is in California, was very tired, but he perked up very quickly.
All three of them said the same thing: that they were so happy to receive the award with the other two.
The technology took the research world by storm about 15 years ago, primarily because it makes it possible to see what function different cells actually have.
The German researchers Nagel and Hegemann discovered a protein in a single-celled alga. Hegemann asked how the tiny alga could swim towards the light. The answer lay in the protein, which reacted to blue light and opened a channel through the cell’s surface. This led to an electrical pulse.
Works on rodents
Whichever cell they put the protein into, the cell became light-sensitive. That’s where the American Deisseroth came into the picture. When he introduced the gene for the algae protein into rodents, he eventually managed to get it to function in the brains of living mice.
Optogenetics is a difficult word, but it is a transformative new technology that allows you to control brain activity in living animals, says Perlmann and continues:
You can decide which neural circuits to turn on or off. It’s a phenomenal tool for really starting to understand how the brain works in depth.
Mapping the brain
With the help of these findings, researchers have also been able to map which neural circuits in the brain control specific memories, emotions and behaviors, the Nobel Assembly writes.
The field of research has, among other things, provided a greater understanding of various characteristics within psychiatric diagnoses and neurological diseases. But there are also ongoing studies in which researchers are trying to restore the vision of people affected by a disease that destroys the eye’s light-sensitive cones and rods.
In a 2021 study in Nature Medicine, a person who had been blind for 40 years partially regained his vision with the help of the technology and a pair of special glasses.
Karl Deisseroth, born in 1971. Professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, USA.
Peter Hegemann, born in 1954. Professor of neuroscience at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.
Georg Nagel, born in 1953. Professor of molecular plant physiology at the University of Würzburg, Germany.
The three are awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”
