Congratulations to David Ginty, the Edward R. and Anne G. Lefler Professor and Chair of Neurobiology at HMS, an HHMI investigator, and co-director of the Harvard Brain Science Initiative, on being awarded the 2026 Brain Prize! The Brain Prize is the world’s largest neuroscience research prize, awarded each year by the Lundbeck Foundation. The Brain Prize recognizes highly original and influential advances in any area of brain research, from basic neuroscience to applied clinical research. Ginty shares this honor with Patrik Ernfors of the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. Both researchers are being honored for their pioneering discoveries on how the nervous system detects and processes touch and pain.

Professor Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg is Chair of The Brain Prize Selection Committee and explains the reasoning for awarding Professors David Ginty and Patrik Ernfors the Brain Prize 2026:
“Somatosensation defines the integrity of the body and the boundary between the body and the world and is thus crucial for our sense of physical self and our interactions with the world around us. The ability to detect and interpret touch, pain, itch, and temperature depends on an extraordinary diversity of peripheral sensory neurons, supporting cells, and precisely organised spinal cord and brainstem circuits. By discovering and categorising distinct sensory neuron types, linking them to specific end organs and pathways, and providing novel widely used genetic and molecular tools, their work has created a blueprint for understanding normal touch and for pinpointing where things go wrong in disorders such as chronic pain, and hyper- and hyposensitivity that may be associated with diseases of the nervous system.”

Click here to read more about the Brain Prize and past/present awardees.

Click here to learn more about the Ginty Lab’s research.