$1.1 Million Brain Prize Awarded for Technique to Visualize Live Brain Cells
The world's most valuable prize for neuroscience research was awarded today (March 9) to four German and American scientists who invented a microscopy technique that reveals the finest structures of the brain, in both health and disease. American scientists Karel Svoboda and David Tank and German scientists Winfried Denk and Arthur Konnerth shared the $1.08-million (1 million euro) Brain Prize for the invention and development of two-photon microscopy, a technique to create detailed images of brain cells and the connections, or synapses, between them, in action. "Thanks to these four scientists, we're now able to study the normal brain's development and attempt to understand what goes wrong when we're affected by destructive diseases such as Alzheimer's and other types of dementia," Povl Krogsgaard-Larsen, chairman of the Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Foundation, which awards The Brain Prize, said in a statement. Two-photon microscopy is an advanced form of fluorescence microscopy, a technique that involves labeling parts of cells with molecules that glow, or fluoresce, when light of a certain wavelength shines on them (typically ultraviolet light).
