US and German scientists win Nobel medicine prize for using light to control individual brain cells

From the Newshound archive · first published 5 October 2026 · last updated 6 October 2026.

Karl Deisseroth, 54, of Stanford University, and Germans Peter Hegemann, 71, and Georg Nagel, 73, have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for developing optogenetics, a technique that switches individual nerve cells in a living brain on and off using light. The trio will share a prize of 12 million Swedish crowns (£890,000). Their research is already being used in animal models to study schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy and addiction.

The Nobel Assembly said a 'new era in neuroscience' had opened, but stressed it was 'only the beginning.'

The breakthrough traces back to the 1990s, when Hegemann studied how algae react to light, leading to the discovery of channelrhodopsin-2, a light-sensitive protein that generates electrical impulses.

Deisseroth's wife Michelle Monje-Deisseroth said the Karolinska Institute woke the couple to deliver the news: 'It was a very welcome wake-up call.'