[2026 Nobel Prize] Turning Brain Cells On and Off with Light... Three Pioneers of Optogenetics Win Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (Update)

Deisseroth, Hegemann, and Nagel Share Award for Precision Control of Neural Activity
Paving the Way for New Research into Brain Circuits and Behavior
12 Million Swedish Kronor Prize

The Nobel Committee at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden announced on the 5th (local time) that Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel have been selected as joint recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Their achievements center around their discoveries relating to light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.

Karl Deisseroth (from left), Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel, who were selected as the Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine for 2026. They jointly received the award for their discoveries related to light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. Provided by Nobel Foundation (Photo by Niklas Elmehed/Nobel Prize Outreach)

Optogenetics is a technology that enables researchers to turn specific nerve cells in the living brain on or off using light. By expressing light-responsive proteins in certain neurons and then illuminating them, scientists can finely control the activity of these cells. The Nobel Committee explained that this technology is currently being used as a key research tool in laboratories around the world to unravel how the brain works.

The starting point for the technology was an observation of how microorganisms sense light. Hegemann and Nagel identified “channelrhodopsin,” a protein in unicellular algae that permits ions to pass through the membrane in response to light, and Deisseroth advanced this discovery into a tool for controlling neurons with light. Deisseroth’s research team demonstrated that inserting the channelrhodopsin gene into neurons and then applying blue light could trigger neural signals, and later expanded this technique to enable the control of neurons in the brains of living animals using light.

The advent of optogenetics has enabled researchers to directly track the roles of specific neural circuits in memory, emotion, and behavior in the living brain. Whereas previous methods were limited to observing or electrically stimulating selected regions of the brain, optogenetics makes it possible to choose only the desired type of neuron and modulate its activity with millisecond precision, fundamentally transforming research in neuroscience.

Deisseroth is a professor at Stanford University in the United States, Hegemann is a professor at Humboldt University of Berlin in Germany, and Nagel is a professor at the University of Würzburg in Germany. The three laureates will share a prize of 12 million Swedish kronor (about 1.2 million US dollars). This year’s Nobel Prize amount increased by 1 million Swedish kronor, up from 11 million last year.

Beginning with the Physiology or Medicine prize announced on this day, this year’s Nobel laureates will be revealed as follows: Physics on the 6th, Chemistry on the 7th, Literature on the 8th, Peace on the 9th, and Economics on the 12th.

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