American and German scientists win 2026 Nobel medicine prize for technique that switches brain cells on and off with light

From the Newshound archive · first published 6 October 2026.

Karl Deisseroth, 54, of Stanford University, and German scientists Peter Hegemann, 71, and Georg Nagel, 73, have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their creation of optogenetics, a method that uses light to control individual nerve cells. The 12 million Swedish crown prize will be split between them. Their research is already being used in animal models of schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, epilepsy and addiction.

The origins of the breakthrough go back to the early 1990s, when Hegemann showed that the alga chlamydomonas reacts to light within half a millisecond.

Nagel identified channelrhodopsin-2, a light-sensitive ion channel; Deisseroth then demonstrated the technique using rat nerve cells at Stanford.