The 2026 Brain Prize will be awarded to Professor David Ginty (USA) and Professor Patrick Ernfors (Sweden) for their pioneering discoveries into how the nervous system detects and processes touch and pain. Their research has rewritten the textbook and opened new avenues for the development of targeted treatments for conditions such as chronic pain and touch sensitivity.
copenhagen, denmark, March 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The somatosensory system provides a sense of our own body and physical interaction with the world. Our sense of touch allows us to perceive the wind passing by, feel the shape and texture of objects in our hands, and feel physical contact with others. It provides important sensory feedback that controls how our bodies move and respond to the outside world. The somatosensory system also includes the ability to feel pain. Pain can be caused by mechanical stimulation, heat, or harmful chemicals. Although unpleasant, it is essential to our survival and acts as a warning system to protect us from harmful things. Disturbances in the normal ability to sense touch and pain can lead to severe debilitating diseases, such as touch hypersensitivity, which is seen in many developmental disorders, and chronic pain, which affects millions of people around the world.
Touch and pain have been studied for more than 150 years, but Patrik Ernfors (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden) and David Pinty (Harvard Medical School, USA) revolutionized the field by identifying how nerve cells in the skin convert painful thermal and mechanical stimuli, such as stroking, vibration, and pushing, into neural signals. The researchers went on to further map how these signals are transmitted to the spinal cord, where they are processed and sent to the brain to create awareness of, and emotional and behavioral responses to, interactions with the physical world.
Together, their discoveries have rewritten textbook somatosensory principles and provided the basis for a new generation of targeted interventions for pain and somatosensory dysfunction based on specific cell types and neural pathways.
Professor Andreas Mayer Lindenberg, Chairman of the Brain Prize Selection Committee, explains why he is awarding the 2026 Brain Prize to Professors David Ginty and Patrick Ernfors:
“Somatosensation defines the integrity of the body and the boundaries between body and world, and is therefore critical to our sense of physical self and interaction with the world around us. The ability to detect and interpret touch, pain, itch, and temperature depends on an incredible diversity of peripheral sensory neurons, supporting cells, and precisely organized spinal and brainstem circuits that fire different types of sensory neurons. By looking at, classifying, and linking them to specific end organs and pathways, a new and widely used genetic and molecular tool, their research has created a blueprint for understanding normal contacts and pinpointing where problems are occurring in diseases such as chronic pain, hypersensitivity, and hypersensitivity that can be associated with diseases of the nervous system.
On behalf of the Lundbeck Foundation, CEO Lene Skole would like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to the two winners.
“Our ability to feel touch and pain is perhaps the most underappreciated of our senses. It gives us a sense of self and engagement with the world. Without it, we would feel disembodied. It’s hard to imagine how profound this is, and it’s hard to really understand, but we have a strange sense of touch and pain. The fundamental new insights into the neuroscience of touch and pain provided by Patrick Ernfors and David Ginty are truly remarkable and offer hope to patients living with disorders such as: We are thrilled to award these outstanding scientists with the 2026 Brain Prize.”
Detailed information
Brain Prize.org