Oct 6, 2026
Author Spotlight: Karl Deisseroth — The Psychiatrist Who Taught Light to Talk to the Brain
A deep dive on Karl Deisseroth — the Boston-born psychiatrist, neuroscientist and bioengineer who turned a light-sensing protein from pond algae into optogenetics, a method that lets researchers switch individual brain cells on and off in living animals; the Stanford professor who also wrote the lyrical, prize-winning memoir Projections: A Story of Human Emotions; the winner, with Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel, of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; his defining reflections on risk, psychiatry, self-understanding, human brokenness and choice; and the legacy of a scientist who has spent two decades trying to explain how feelings are made — a man whose English Wikipedia biography drew 112,054 views the day after the prize was announced, up from 92 the day before.