The Brain Prize

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The Brain Prize
Awarded forThe Brain Prize is awarded to one or more scientists who have distinguished themselves by an outstanding contribution to neuroscience and who are still active in research. The Prize is global.
Country Denmark
Presented byA Royal Highness and the Chairman of the board
RewardDKK 10 million
First award2011
Website www.lundbeckfonden.com/thebrainprize/

The Brain Prize, [1] formerly known as The Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize, is an international scientific award honouring "one or more scientists who have distinguished themselves by an outstanding contribution to neuroscience and who are still active in research". [2] Founded in 2011 by the Lundbeck Foundation, the prize is associated with a DKK 10 million award to the nominees, the world’s largest brain research prize. [3] [1]

Contents

Nominees can be of any nationality. [4] Prize winners are expected to interact with Danish brain researchers e.g. through lectures, master classes, seminars, exchange programmes for researchers or other activities agreed with and financially supported by the Lundbeck Foundation. [5] [2]

History

The Brain Prize [6] was established by the Lundbeck Foundation in 2010 as a European prize and was awarded for the first time in 2011. Today the Prize is global. [4] [2]

Selection committee

As of 2024, the selection committee for the prize consisted of: [7]

Laureates

YearLaureatesCountryCitation
2011 Péter Somogyi Flag of Hungary.svg / Flag of the United Kingdom.svg ”For their wide-ranging, technically and conceptually brilliant research on the functional organization of neuronal circuits in the cerebral cortex, especially in the hippo¬campus, a region that is crucial for certain forms of memory" [8]
Tamás Freund Flag of Hungary.svg
György Buzsáki Flag of Hungary.svg / Flag of the United States.svg
2012 Christine Petit Flag of France.svg "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" [8]
Karen Steel Flag of the United Kingdom.svg
2013 Ernst Bamberg Flag of Germany.svg "For their invention and refinement of optogenetics. This revolutionary technique allows genetically specified populations of neurons to be turned on or off with light, offering not only the ability to elucidate the characteristics of normal and abnormal neural circuitry but also new approaches to treatment of brain disorders" [8]
Edward Boyden Flag of the United States.svg
Karl Deisseroth Flag of the United States.svg
Peter Hegemann Flag of Germany.svg
Gero Miesenböck Flag of Austria.svg
Georg Nagel Flag of Germany.svg
2014 Giacomo Rizzolatti Flag of Italy.svg "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" [8]
Stanislas Dehaene Flag of France.svg
Trevor W. Robbins Flag of the United Kingdom.svg
2015 Winfried Denk Flag of Germany.svg "For invention, refinement and use of two-photon microscopy to provide detailed, dynamic images of activity in individual nerve cells, dendrites and synapses, thereby transforming the study of development, plasticity and functional circuitry of the brain" [8]
Arthur Konnerth Flag of Germany.svg
Karel Svoboda Flag of the United States.svg
David W. Tank Flag of the United States.svg
2016 Timothy Bliss Flag of the United Kingdom.svg "For their ground-breaking research on the cellular and molecular basis of Long-Term Potentiation and the demonstration that this form of synaptic plasticity underpins spatial memory and learning" [8]
Graham Collingridge Flag of the United Kingdom.svg
Richard G. Morris Flag of the United Kingdom.svg
2017 Wolfram Schultz Flag of Germany.svg "For their multidisciplinary analysis of brain mechanisms that link learning to reward, which has far-reaching implications for the understanding of human behaviour, including disorders of decision-making in conditions such as gambling, drug addiction, compulsive behaviour and schizophrenia" [8]
Peter Dayan Flag of the United Kingdom.svg
Ray Dolan Flag of Ireland.svg
2018 Bart De Strooper Flag of Belgium (civil).svg "For their groundbreaking research on the genetic and molecular basis of Alzheimer’s disease, with far-reaching implications for the development of new therapeutic interventions as well as for the understanding of other neurodegenerative diseases of the brain'" [8]
Michel Goedert Flag of Luxembourg.svg
Christian Haass Flag of Germany.svg
John Hardy Flag of the United Kingdom.svg
2019 Marie-Germaine Bousser Flag of France.svg "for more than 30 years spent describing, understanding and diagnosing the most common inherited form of stroke, CADASIL"
Hugues Chabriat Flag of France.svg
Anne Joutel Flag of France.svg
Elisabeth Tournier-Lasserve Flag of France.svg
2020 Sir Adrian Bird Flag of the United Kingdom.svg "for their fundamental and pioneering work on Rett syndrome." [8]
Huda Zoghbi Flag of Lebanon.svg / Flag of the United States.svg
2021 Lars Edvinsson Flag of Sweden.svg "for their groundbreaking work on the causes and treatment of migraine"
Peter Goadsby Flag of Australia (converted).svg / Flag of the United Kingdom.svg
Michael A. Moskowitz Flag of the United States.svg
Jes Olesen Flag of Denmark.svg
2022 Silvia Arber Flag of Switzerland (Pantone).svg "for having revolutionized our understanding of the neuronal cell types and circuits underlying movement." [9]
Ole Kiehn Flag of Denmark.svg
Martyn Goulding Flag of New Zealand.svg / Flag of the United States.svg
2023 Michael E. Greenberg Flag of the United States.svg "for having revolutionized our understanding of how neurons regulate the thousands of different proteins – the building blocks of life, that are needed to support brain development, plasticity and maintenance." [10]
Christine Holt Flag of the United Kingdom.svg
Erin Schuman Flag of the United States.svg
2024 Larry Abbott Flag of the United States.svg "to have made pioneering contributions to the field of computational and theoretical neuroscience and have made seminal contributions to our understanding of the principles that govern the brain’s structure, dynamics and the emergence of cognition and behaviour." [11]
Terrence Sejnowski Flag of the United States.svg
Haim Sompolinsky Flag of Israel.svg

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "The Brain Prize 2022 awarded to neuroscience pioneers who revolutionised understanding of neuronal cell types and circuits underlying movement". Federation of European Neuroscience Societies. 2022-03-04. Retrieved 2023-02-16.
  2. 1 2 3 "The Brain Prize | The Lundbeck Foundation". lundbeckfonden.com. Retrieved 2023-02-16.
  3. "Awards for KU Leuven researchers". gbiomed.kuleuven.be. Retrieved 2023-02-16.
  4. 1 2 The Brain Prize - Official Website
  5. "Brain Prize | Texas Children's Hospital". www.texaschildrens.org. 4 November 2021. Retrieved 2023-02-16.
  6. "BBC Radio 4 - All in the Mind, The Brain Prize winners". BBC. Retrieved 2023-02-16.
  7. "Selection Committee". The Brain Prize. Archived from the original on 14 September 2017. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Prize Winners 2011 - Lundbeckfonden - The Brain Prize". www.thebrainprize.org. Archived from the original on 13 May 2020. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
  9. "Laureates 2022". Archived from the original on 2023-04-05. Retrieved 2023-03-23.
  10. Laureates 2023
  11. "The Brain Prize". Lundbeck Foundation. Archived from the original on 30 January 2025. Retrieved 30 January 2025.