{"id":244926,"date":"2026-10-05T13:02:46","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T18:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/millisecond-timescale-genetically-targeted-optical-control-of-neural-activity"},"modified":"2026-10-05T13:02:46","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T18:02:46","slug":"millisecond-timescale-genetically-targeted-optical-control-of-neural-activity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/millisecond-timescale-genetically-targeted-optical-control-of-neural-activity","title":{"rendered":"Millisecond-timescale, genetically targeted optical control of neural activity"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Karl Deisseroth just won the Nobel Prize.<\/p>\n

He showed that brain cells can be turned on\/off by shining blue light on them, after inserting a light-sensitive protein from algae.<\/p>\n

The method was named optogenetics and has been used worldwide to link specific neural circuits to behavior.<\/p>\n

But Ed Boyden is the main author of this paper? I was wondering.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a question many people in neuroscience are asking today, and there are a few layers to it.<\/p>\n

First, what the prize actually honors. The 2026 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine went to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel \u201cfor their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics\u201d \u2014 essentially two scientific contributions: discovering the light-gated ion channel (Hegemann and Nagel\u2019s channelrhodopsin work in the early 2000s) and turning it into a tool for controlling neurons (Deisseroth). Boyden\u2019s name does appear in the Nobel committee\u2019s own advanced documentation, which explicitly describes the 2005 paper as work by \u201cDeisseroth, Nagel and collaborators\u201d \u2014 the committee treats Deisseroth as the driving scientific force behind the neural-control half of the discovery.<\/p>\n

Second, why first authorship doesn\u2019t settle it. In the 2005 paper (Boyden, Zhang, Bamberg, Nagel, Deisseroth), Boyden was the first author, but Deisseroth was the senior\/last author \u2014 meaning it was his lab, his conception of the project, and his scientific program. Nobel committees don\u2019t reward authorship order; they try to identify who originated the decisive insight. Boyden was a graduate student at the time, doing the experiments within Deisseroth\u2019s research program (Boyden himself has described working first in Richard Tsien\u2019s lab, then moving into Deisseroth\u2019s new Stanford lab in spring 2005).<\/p>\n

Continue reading \u201cMillisecond-timescale, genetically targeted optical control of neural activity\u201d | ><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Karl Deisseroth just won the Nobel Prize. He showed that brain cells can be turned on\/off by shining blue light on them, after inserting a light-sensitive protein from algae. The method was named optogenetics and has been used worldwide to link specific neural circuits to behavior. But Ed Boyden is the main author of this [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}