Peter Hegemann

Optogenetics won the medicine prize.

Specifically, they recognized Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Gero Nagel for discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.

Those are the three with their artwork.

Um, this is a technology that allows neuroscientists to turn on and off specific neurons in the brain using light, and this allows scientists to establish causal links between stimuli, neur- neural firing, like the activity of neurons in the brain, and behavior of the animal at large.

Again, we started this by looking at, like, how, uh, it was working algae.

Yes.

Channelrhodopsin was first found in algae by Peter Hegemann.

And then it became, oh, this is a way for us to be able to, uh, create and drive action within neurons.

[ding] Fact number five.

The 2026 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine went to Karl Deisseroth from the United States, as well as two German scientists, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel.

This prize was for something called optogenetics, which is a tool that's used to study how the brain works.

The opto part means light, and the genetic part is about DNA.

Together, Hall and Woodford helped build a more detailed understanding of how individual economic decisions and expectations drive economy-wide fluctuations, giving policymakers better tools to study inflation, recessions, and monetary policy.

The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three men, Karl Deisseroth of Stanford, Peter Hegemann of Humboldt University of Berlin, and Georg Nagel of the University of Würzburg, Germany.

The Nobel Committee recognized them, quote, for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics, end quote.

So what exactly does that mean? For centuries, scientists have struggled with a fundamental problem in neuroscience.

When light strikes them, they open and allow electrically charged particles, aka ions, to pass through.

Because moving ions creates electrical charges, these proteins can act as light-controlled switches.

Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel helped discover and characterize these light-sensitive proteins, demonstrating how they could control electrical activity.

Karl Deisseroth and his collaborators subsequently developed techniques for inserting genes that produce these proteins in mammal neurons.

Even more amazing, Kagan is a Holocaust survivor who escaped the Nazis and French collaborators during World War II.

And the twenty twenty-six Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine has gone to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and George Nagel for discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics, which allows researchers to use light to switch the activity of selected nerve cells off or on, thereby making it possible to investigate which cells and neural circuits are contributing to particular memories, emotions, and behaviors.

Okay, turning to other news now.

And in what appears to be disturbingly similar to China's COVID-19 lab leak which killed millions of people around the world, the Kremlin has denied claims that a biological weapon based on the plague which it's been developing has escaped the lab and is now spreading through the landscape.