The Brain Prize 2013: the optogenetics revolution

The 2013 Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize was awarded to Ernst Bamberg, Edward Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, Gero Miesenböck, and Georg Nagel 'for their invention and refinement of optogenetics'. Why optogenetics? And why this sextet? To appreciate why, we turn first to some of the core questions of neuroscience and the technical difficulties that long obstructed their resolution.