Six eminent scientists share the world’s largest brain research prize

The names of the prize winners, Austrian Gero Miesenböck, Germans Ernst Bamberg, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel, and Americans Ed Boyden and Karl Deisseroth, were announced on 11 March in Copenhagen.

Together these scientists laid the foundations for a revolutionary technique – optogenetics – which will provide us with entirely new, fundamental knowledge of the complicated functions of the brain.

Optogenetics makes it easier to investigate diseases of the brain such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, pain disorders, schizophrenia, ADHD and addiction. It will play a significant role in the understanding of these disorders and, over time, in the development of a treatment for them.

The Brain Prize is awarded by the Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize Foundation.

Further information available at:

www.thebrainprize.org