Nobel Prize in Medicine 2026 awarded for optogenetics, the light switch that controls brain cells

Press Release: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026

The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes jointly to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for optogenetics. Hegemann and Nagel discovered channelrhodopsin, a light-gated ion channel, in the single-celled alga Chlamydomonas; Deisseroth turned it into a switch that fires nerve cells with blue light, first in rat neurons in 2005 and then in living mice. The method now lets researchers map the neural circuits behind memory, feeling, and behavior, and is being tested to restore sight.