About a clear head: The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded for activating neurons with the help of light

In 2026, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for discoveries that led to the creation of optogenetics. This technology allows individual neurons to be switched on and off with millisecond accuracy and is already being used to study memory, behavior, and mechanisms of severe brain diseases. The next stage is the application of these principles in medicine: from restoring vision to treating neurological disorders. Scientists have found the key to controlling nerve cells by studying the reaction of unicellular algae to light. The Soviet and Russian schools of biophysics played an important role in the development of this field.

We looked at the algae's solution

The winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2026 were Karl Deisseroth, a scientist from the United States, as well as Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel, researchers from Germany. They received a prestigious award for their discoveries in the field of light-guided ion channels and optogenetics. This is a method that allows you to turn on and off neurons using light with high accuracy.

"Optogenetics opens up possibilities for mapping the brain that could only be dreamed of before," said Per Svenningsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine.

It all started with a question that seems far from medicine: how does the unicellular alga Chlamydomonas swim towards the light. Peter Hegemann noticed that her cell responds to light in microseconds, too fast for the usual chain of biochemical reactions, and suggested that the photosensitive protein and ion channel are one molecule, Evgenia Sokolova, head of the master's program in Health Sciences at ITMO University, explained to Izvestia.

— In 2002-2003, Georg Nagel and Hegemann proved this: channelorhodopsin (a protein with unique properties located on the cell surface) opens in the light and allows ions to enter the cell. In 2005, Karl Deisseroth embedded this protein in neurons and learned how to fire nerve impulses with a flash of light accurate to milliseconds, and by 2007, he was able to control neurons in the brains of living mice. Previously, neuroscientists could mainly observe the brain, but now, thanks to these discoveries, they can interfere with it," the specialist said.

Where optogenetics is used

The discovery of this technology has given people hope that it can be used to correct many diseases of the nervous system, Vsevolod Belousov, director of the Federal Center for Brain and Neurotechnology at the Federal Medical and Biological Agency, Chairman of the scientific Committee of the National Prize for Future Technologies "Challenge", told Izvestia. For example, it is possible to correct the malfunction of neurons using implanted optical fibers.

— One of the key limitations of the technology is that the immune system can recognize genetically modified neurons as foreign. Nevertheless, in the case of the retina, this problem is practically non-existent, which already makes it possible to use photoprosthetics for its degeneration when a person goes blind. There are already several patients in Switzerland who have been treated with this technology. A person develops elementary vision, that is, the distinction of large chiaroscuro patterns. And Academician Mikhail Arkadyevich Ostrovsky is actively engaged in this in our country," the scientist told Izvestia.

Optogenetics helps to study severe neurological and mental disorders such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, and deep depression, explained the director of the MIPT Phystech School of Biological and Medical Physics, chief designer of VEB.Russian Federation Denis Kuzmin.

— With its help, we can selectively turn cells on or off and check what function they are responsible for. And this already makes it possible to understand the very mechanisms of memory, behavior, the work of sensory systems and various pathologies of the nervous system," the expert said.

Previously, neuroscientists used rather crude methods to study brain activity. For example, with the help of electricity, which affects thousands of cells at once. Optogenetics, on the other hand, allows you to embed rhodopsins into a certain type of neuron and then, by affecting them with light, control the activity of only these cells — very accurately and with a time resolution of up to milliseconds, Anastasia Bochenkova, associate professor of the Faculty of Chemistry and head of the Laboratory of Quantum Photodynamics at Lomonosov Moscow State University, a grant recipient of the Russian Science Foundation, told Izvestia.

According to her, this makes it possible to reliably identify cause-and-effect relationships in the brain and study, for example, the mechanisms of memory or fear. In the future, the method will be in demand in medicine not only to restore vision, but also to eliminate chronic pain and treat other diseases related to brain function. In addition, optogenetics can be useful in creating systems for neuromorphic computing.

How optogenetics is developing in Russia

"Russia is conducting research in all these areas," Anastasia Bochenkova noted. — In particular, our laboratory is studying how rhodopsin molecules in the retina of the eye change their shape under the influence of light, which occurs in less than one trillionth of a second. This is perhaps the fastest chemical reaction in nature, in which the structure of a molecule changes. At the same time, it is still very effective — 70 out of 100 molecules that catch a photon trigger a reaction. On this basis, photosensitive bio-switches can be obtained, which can be used in information transmission devices.

She added that the effect of exposure to light on biomolecules can also be used to make a molecule rotate rapidly in one direction or another. It turns out a molecular motor. It can be used for targeted drug delivery in the body at the cellular level or for creating "smart" materials with changing properties. Such research is also underway in Russia.

The Nobel Prize is awarded to only three scientists, but there are many more worthy of the award in this field, Vsevolod Belousov emphasized.

— In general, the origins of this topic are the Soviet biophysical school headed by Oleg Sineschekov, who studied algae phototaxis back in the 1970s and directly registered electrical light responses in them using classical electrophysiology. He is still developing this technology," the scientist said.

Academician Vsevolod Belousov is developing a new direction — thermogenetics, that is, controlling cells using heat, which is technically easier to implement in medicine without deep implantation of fiber optic fibers into the human brain, which usually deliver light, Valery Tuchin, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, head of the SSU Scientific Medical Center, winner of the Challenge Award, told Izvestia..

— At Saratov University, we are developing the technology of optical illumination of the scalp in order to deliver light of various wavelengths to the deep layers of the brain without the introduction of optical fibers, — said the specialist.

Today, research in the field of optogenetics and neuromodulation in our country is also conducted at MIPT and FMBA. According to Denis Kuzmin, the Center for Research on the Molecular Mechanisms of Aging and Age-related Diseases is doing this at Phystech: they are working with microbial rhodopsin, developing new optogenetic tools and exploring the possibility of controlling processes using light not only in cells, but also in individual cellular organelles.