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Brain Prize ceremony 2014

Mon, 19 May 2014 09:32:00 GMT

The Brain Prize for 2014 is awarded to Stanislas Dehaene, Giacomo Rizzolatti and Trevor Robbins for
'their pioneering research on higher brain mechanisms underpinning such complex human functions as literacy, numeracy, motivated behaviour and social cognition, and for their efforts to understand cognitive and behavioural disorders.
The prize was presented by her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mary at a ceremony at the Black Diamond building in May 2014.
For more info www.thebrainprize.com

The Brain Prize - Six eminent scientists share the world’s largest brain...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 19:54:34 GMT

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

The Brain Prize
Denmark's 1 million euro brain research prize is awarded to six leading scientists for the development of ‘optogenetics’, a revolutionary technique that advances our understanding of the brain and its disorders.

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 Monday 11 March 2013 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. British professor Colin Blakemore, chairman of the Foundation's selection committee, says:
“Optogenetic control of nerve cells is arguably the most important technical advance in neuroscience in the past 40 years. It offers a revolution in our understanding of the way in which circuits of neurons carry out complex functions, such as learning and controlling movement. And it could provide an entirely new approach to the restoration of function in blindness or brain degeneration, and to the treatment of a variety of other neurological and psychiatric disorders”

Breakthrough of the decade Optogenetics, which has been called the breakthrough of the decade, involves the use of light to control neurons. Neurons can be genetically modified and made light sensitive. Then, when these neurons are stimulated by specific wavelengths of light, they can be turned either on or off.

The four European scientists, Bamberg, Hegemann, Miesenböck and Nagel, made the fundamental observations and discoveries and developed light sensitive molecules that can be introduced into specific types of neuron.
The two Americans collaborated with the Europeans to develop the technique further and put it to work in living mammals.
Neuroscience provides an important understanding of both the function of the normal brain and the causes of brain disorders.
It is estimated that more is spent on disorders of the brain
and the nervous system than on cardiovascular disease and cancer combined.

For instance, due to the growing size of the elderly population we will see a dramatic increase in the number of people with Alzheimer's. And costs are expected to rise. There are 7 million people living with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia in Europe alone.

This figure is expected to double every 20 years and the cost of dealing with dementia, which currently amounts to 130 billion euros in Europe, will increase correspondingly.

Consolidating the research environment The Brain Prize, which is the world's largest brain research prize, will be awarded for the third time this year. By augmenting the interaction between scientists in both Europe and
the USA, the Prize contributes to the consolidation of the international brain research environment. Chairman of the Foundation's board,

Nils Axelsen, MD, says:
"The Prize can be awarded to scientists who have conducted research in Europe, or to scientists who have conducted research in collaboration with European scientists.
Thus, the Prize stimulates international cooperation between the traditionally strong research environments in Europe and in the USA. However, it also inspires cooperation with other countries which are well on the way to developing solid research environments in the field of brain research."

The six scientists will all come to Denmark to receive the shared prize of 1 million euros at a ceremony on 2 May.
For further details, please contact:
European Brain Research Foundation
Ole Maaløes Vej 3
2200 Copenhagen N
Denmark
www.thebrainprize.org

Brain Prize Winners 2012 Karen Steel and Christine Petit

Sun, 06 May 2012 13:44:37 GMT

The Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Foundation has announced that The Brain Prize 2012 is jointly awarded to Christine Petit and Karen Steel:
‘for their unique, world-leading contributions to our understanding of the genetic regulation of the development and functioning of the ear, and for elucidating the causes of many of the hundreds of inherited forms of deafness’.
Inherited conditions render one in a thousand children deaf at birth, and cause as many again to become deaf before maturity, leading to delay or failure in the acquisition of speech, and frequently to disadvantages in communication and learning. Genetic anomalies also contribute to many age-related and progressive forms of hearing loss. About one-tenth of the population in the developed world suffers from significant hearing impairment, which has an enormous impact on individuals and on society.
Karen Steel and Christine Petit are at the forefront of efforts to understand the molecular mechanisms of the specialised hair cells in the inner ear, whose extraordinary sensitivity to mechanical stimulation underpins the senses of hearing and balance. These two researchers, at the peak of their productivity and influence, are international leaders in the field of hereditary deafness.
Each has brought special skill to this challenging area of research. Their approaches have been complementary. Karen Steel has worked upwards, employing elegant and exhaustive study of mutations in mice and their functional consequences to illuminate human disorders. Christine Petit has started with the genetic analysis of patients, subsequently investigating the role of the identified genes in animal model systems.
Professor Colin Blakemore, Oxford University, Chairman of the Selection Committee said: ‘Together, the work of these two Europeans scientists illustrates the value and power of interdisciplinary approaches in neuroscience, and the way in which cutting-edge fundamental research is needed to understand complex clinical problems and to accelerate benefit for patients’.......’We are delighted that The Brain Prize for the best of European neuroscience goes, in its second year, to two
Ole Maaløes Vej 3 DK-2200 Copenhagen N Denmark
Tel. +45 3917 8240 info@thebrainprize.org www.thebrainprize.org
12 March 2012
women scientists. We are sure that the award will be applauded by female researchers around the world, and by all those who are concerned that young women are given every encouragement to consider careers in science’
The prize lectures and award ceremony will take place 9th May in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Prize will be presented by Her Majesty the Queen.
Bios: Christine Petit, Professor at College de France, holding the Chair of Genetics and Cellular Physiology, head of the Genetics and Physiology of Hearing laboratory at the Institut Pasteur in Paris also affiliated to INSERM, is a geneticist and a neurobiologist. She conceived and pioneered the genetic strategy to assess the molecular mechanisms underlying the cochlear differentiation and physiology. She developed this genetic approach in humans, by succeeding to overcome the difficulties specific to linkage analysis for deafness. She thereby mapped to human chromosomes the first two genes responsible for hereditary congenital deafness. She identified the causative genes for about 20 inherited forms of deafness, initially by an innovative candidate gene approach. Together with her colleagues, she also unraveled the roles of most of the proteins encoded by these genes, namely in the sensory hair cells, their stimulating gel, and the supporting cells, by multidisciplinary studies of engineered mouse models. Her work shed light on the functions mediated through various fibrous links within the hair bundle, the mechanoreceptive structure to sound. Her work on Usher syndrome (deafness, blindness), demonstrated that all Usher 1 proteins as well as all Usher 2 proteins form protein networks enabling the links they form to shape the hair bundle. She also identified some Usher1 proteins as components of the mechanotransduction machinery. Christine Petit’s discoveries have already had a significant impact on medical practice, with respect to diagnosis, genetic counseling and therapeutic decisions by indicating the potential benefit of cochlear implants and hearing aids for patients.
Karen Steel, Professor and Principal Investigator for the Genetics of Deafness and founder of the Mouse Genetics Programme at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, near Cambridge, UK, has pioneered the use of mouse models, starting with her painstaking description of the characteristics of mutant mice with disorders of balance and hearing. Her early work on cochlear function and hair cell degeneration in the mutant deafness mouse led to identification of the gene called Tmc1, the human homologue of which is mutated in several forms of hereditary deafness. She and her colleagues went on to identify causative genes in nearly 30 forms of hearing disorder in mice, most of which have been linked to human conditions. In particular, she described the genes for myosin-7a and cadherin-23, which are key components in the transduction mechanism in hair cells, and mutations of which underlie forms of Usher Syndrome. Karen Steel is internationally recognized for her generous and altruistic approach to science. Working with a consortium of European researchers, she has established, catalogued and made freely available to other researchers
several hundred mouse mutant lines, which have facilitated research in several areas of neuroscience around the world.
About the Brain Prize The Brain Prize - € 1 million is awarded by Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Foundation, a charitable, non-profit organization.
The Brain Prize is a personal prize awarded to one or more scientists who have distinguished themselves by an outstanding contribution to European neuroscience.
For more information please contact:
Kim Krogsgaard, MD, DMSc or Director Mobile: +45 2014 8384 Phone: +45 3917 8240 kk@thebrainprize.org
Nils Axelsen, MD, DMsc Chairman Mobile: +45 40548646
Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Foundation Ole Maaløes Vej 3 2200 N Copenhagen
Denmark
www.thebrainprize.org

The Brain Prize Meeting 2011

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:52:25 GMT

Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Foundation hosted the annual Brain Prize Meeting at Hindsgavl Castle in Denmark from October 6-8th, 2011. The meeting was planned in collaboration with the Danish Neuroscience Schools and Danish Society for Neuroscience and it allowed for interaction between the three Hungarian prize winners and Danish brain researchers.