Switching on brain cells: the Nobel-winning science of optogenetics

Home Health To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: © France 24 01:46 Issued on: 05/10/2026 - 23:56 The Nobel medicine prize was awarded Monday to US psychiatrist and neurologist Karl Deisseroth and German scientists Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for their pioneering work in the neuroscience field of optogenetics. In optogenetics, scientists control neurones by stimulating them with light -- potentially unlocking breakthroughs for conditions such as dementia, depression and blindness. FRANCE 24's Monte Francis reports. Keywords for this article