The Brain Prize Ceremony 2013 at the Black Diamond, Copenhagen

The Grete Lundbeck European Brain Prize Ceremony 2013

In May 2013, Denmark's 1 million euro brain research prize was awarded to six leading scientists for the development of ‘optogenetics’, a revolutionary technique that advances our understanding of the brain and its disorders.

His Royal Highness Crown Prince Frederik presented the prize to the prize winners, Austrian Gero Miesenböck, Germans Ernst Bamberg, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel, and Americans Ed Boyden and Karl Deisseroth.

Together these scientists laid the foundation 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.