The Brain Prize

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]

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]

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]

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

• Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg (chair) - Germany
• Carmen Sandi (vice chair) - Switzerland
• Eunjoon Kim - Korea
• Gina Turrigiano - USA
• Katrin Amunts - Germany
• Ole Kiehn - Denmark
• Ole Petter Ottersen - Norway
• Pamela Shaw - United Kingdom
• Sabine Kastner - USA
• Samuel Berkovic - Australia

• Source: Lundbeck Foundation

Year	Laureates	Country	Citation
2011	Péter Somogyi	/	”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
	György Buzsáki	/
2012	Christine Petit		"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
2013	Ernst Bamberg		"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
	Karl Deisseroth
	Peter Hegemann
	Gero Miesenböck
	Georg Nagel
2014	Giacomo Rizzolatti		"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
	Trevor W. Robbins
2015	Winfried Denk		"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
	Karel Svoboda
	David W. Tank
2016	Timothy Bliss		"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
	Richard G. Morris
2017	Wolfram Schultz		"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
	Ray Dolan
2018	Bart De Strooper		"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
	Christian Haass
	John Hardy
2019	Marie-Germaine Bousser		"for more than 30 years spent describing, understanding and diagnosing the most common inherited form of stroke, CADASIL"
	Hugues Chabriat
	Anne Joutel
	Elisabeth Tournier-Lasserve
2020	Sir Adrian Bird		"for their fundamental and pioneering work on Rett syndrome."[8]
	Huda Zoghbi	/
2021	Lars Edvinsson		"for their groundbreaking work on the causes and treatment of migraine"
	Peter Goadsby	/
	Michael A. Moskowitz
	Jes Olesen
2022	Silvia Arber		"for having revolutionized our understanding of the neuronal cell types and circuits underlying movement."[9]
	Ole Kiehn
	Martyn Goulding	/
2023	Michael E. Greenberg		"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
	Erin Schuman
2024	Larry Abbott		"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
	Haim Sompolinsky

• The Kavli Prize
• Golden Brain Award
• Gruber Prize in Neuroscience
• W. Alden Spencer Award
• Karl Spencer Lashley Award
• The Mind & Brain Prize
• Ralph W. Gerard Prize in Neuroscience
• List of neuroscience awards
• List of psychology awards