Copenhagen, March 5, 2026
The somatosensory system provides us with the sense of our own body and its physical interactions with the world. Our sense of touch enables us to perceive a passing breeze, feel the shape and texture of objects in our hands or the physical contact of others. It provides crucial sensory feedback that controls how we move our body and respond to the outside world. The somatosensory system also encompasses our ability to feel pain. Pain can be caused by mechanical stimuli, heat and noxious chemicals. While unpleasant, it is essential for our survival, acting as a warning system that protects us from what is harmful. Disruptions in our normal ability to sense touch and pain can lead to severe and debilitating conditions, including hypersensitivity to touch -observed in many developmental disorders, and chronic pain which affects millions of people worldwide.
Although touch and pain have been studied for more than 150 years, Patrik Ernfors (Karolinska Institute, Sweden) and David Ginty (Harvard Medical School, US) have revolutionised the field by identifying how nerve cells in the skin transform painful, thermal and mechanical stimulation, such as stroking, vibration, or indentation, into neural signals. They have further mapped how these signals are transmitted to and processed within the spinal cord and then sent to the brain where the perception of – and the emotional and behavioral reactions to – our interactions with the physical world are created.
Together, their discoveries have rewritten textbook principles of somatosensation and provided the foundation for a new generation of targeted interventions for pain and somatosensory dysfunction based on specific cell types and neural pathways.
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.”
On behalf of the Lundbeck Foundation, CEO Lene Skole extends her warmest congratulations to the two prize recipients:
”Our ability to feel touch and pain is perhaps the most underappreciated of our senses. It gives us our sense of self and of our interactions with the world. Without it we would feel disembodied. This is hard to imagine and to really appreciate how profound it is, we need only look at what happens when the sense of touch and pain goes wrong. The fundamental new insights into the neuroscience of touch and pain provided by Patrik Ernfors and David Ginty are truly remarkable and carry hope for patients living with disorders such as chronic pain. It is a true pleasure to award these outstanding scientists with The Brain Prize 2026.”
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David Ginty
David Ginty, Ph.D., is department chair and the Edward R. and Anne G. Lefler Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, USA. He received his PhD degree in physiology from East Carolina University and completed postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School. He was a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine before returning to Harvard Medical School in 2013. The Ginty laboratory uses a combination of molecular genetic, physiological, anatomical, and behavioural approaches to gain understanding of the development, organisation, and function of neural circuits that underlie the sense of touch. Ginty’s findings have defined the functional properties of somatosensory neuron types across the body, including enigmatic peripheral sensory neuron endings discovered by anatomists over 150 years ago. His laboratory has also discovered mechanisms of touch neuron activation and organisational principles of local spinal cord as well as spinal ascending pathways for touch and pain. Ongoing work is defining the basis of somatosensory system dysfunction in developmental disorders and chronic pain states including therapeutic opportunities to treat touch over-reactivity and pain.
Patrik Ernfors
Patrik Ernfors, PhD., is head of Division of Molecular Neurobiology and Professor of Tissue biology at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. He received a PhD in neuroscience from Karolinska Institute and completed postdoctoral training at the Whitehead Institute, MIT, USA. He returned to a faculty position at Karolinska Institute in 1993. His research group studies the neural pathways in the somatosensory system, that underlie our ability to sense touch, temperature, itch and pain. The Ernfors laboratory combines molecular, computational and systems neuroscience to understand the key cell types and their organisation and applies this knowledge to provide insights into what causes chronic pain. His detailed classification of neurons has proven foundational for insights into how we detect environmental stimuli and their contribution to how we sense the world within and around us. He has shown a remarkable degree of conservation somatosensory cell types and their organization that has enabled translation into humans of knowledge gained from decades of studies on model organisms. This has provided vital new insights into the human somatosensory system in health and disease.
About The Brain Prize
The Brain Prize is the world’s largest neuroscience research prize, awarded each year by the Lundbeck Foundation. The Brain Prize recognises highly original and influential advances in any area of brain research, from basic neuroscience to applied clinical research. Recipients of The Brain Prize may be of any nationality and work in any country in the world. Since it was first awarded in 2011, The Brain Prize has been awarded to 49 scientists from 11 different countries. The Brain Prize ceremony takes place in Copenhagen with the participation of HM The King of Denmark, who is patron of The Brain Prize. Recipients of The Brain Prize receive a gold medal and share the prize of DKK 10m (EUR 1.3m in total).
About the Lundbeck Foundation
The Lundbeck Foundation is an enterprise foundation encompassing a comprehensive range of enterprise and philanthropic activities – all united by its strong purpose, Bringing Discoveries to Lives. The Foundation is the long-term and engaged owner of several international healthcare companies – Lundbeck, Falck, ALK-Abello, Ferrosan Medical Devices, Ellab and WS Audiology – and an active investor in business, science and people through its commercial investments in the financial markets; in biotech companies based on Danish research and through philanthropic grants to science talents and programmes in Danish universities. By 2030, the Foundation aims to increase its average annual grants to at least DKK 1bn primarily focusing on the brain – including the world's largest brain research prize: The Brain Prize.
MEDIA CONTACTS
Martin Meyer, Director of The Brain Prize, +45 3912 8007
Anne Sophie Tonnesen, Sr. Communications Partner, +45 4045 8166
MORE INFO
www.brainprize.org
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