US, German scientists win Nobel medicine prize for work on light and brain

American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine yesterday for developing optogenetics, a technique that uses light to control individual nerve cells in the brain. The Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said Deisseroth, 54, Hegemann, 71, and Nagel, 73, had been selected for their “discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.” “This method (optogenetics) makes it possibl