STOCKHOLM – Two researchers won the Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday for their discoveries about how the human body perceives temperature and touch, revelations that can lead to new ways of treating pain or even heart disease.

Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian identified receptors in the skin that respond to heat and pressure. Their work focuses on the field of somatosensation, which explores the ability of specialized organs such as eyes, ears and skin to see, hear and feel.

“This really unlocks one of nature’s secrets,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the Nobel Committee, as he announced the winners. “It’s actually something that’s crucial to our survival, so it’s a very important and profound discovery.”

The committee said that Julius, who was born in New York and now works at the University of California at San Francisco, used capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers, to identify the nerve sensors that allow the skin to respond to heat.

Patapoutian, who was born in Lebanon and now works at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, found separate pressure-sensitive sensors in cells that respond to mechanical stimulation, it said.

“In our daily lives we take these feelings (of temperature and touch) for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived?” wrote the committee in the announcement. “This issue has been resolved by this year’s Nobel Laureate.”

Perlmann said he managed to get hold of both winners – who shared the prestigious Kavli Prize for Neuroscience last year – before Monday’s announcement.

“I (…) only had a few minutes to talk to them, but they were incredibly happy,” he said. “And as far as I could see, they were very surprised and a little shocked, perhaps.”

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The choice of Julius, 65, and Patapoutian emphasized how little scientists knew about how our bodies perceive the world around them before their discoveries – and how much there is still to learn, says Oscar Marin, director of the MRC Center for Neurodevelopmental Disorders at King’s College London.

“While we understood the physiology of the senses, we did not understand how we felt differences in temperature or pressure,” Marin said. “Knowing how our body feels about these changes is fundamental because once we know these molecules, they can be targeted. It’s like finding a lock and now we know the exact keys that will be needed to unlock it. “

Marin said the discovery opened up “an entire field of pharmacology” and that researchers were already working on developing drugs to target the receptors they identified.

Marin predicted that new treatments for pain are likely to come first, but knowing how the body detects pressure changes may eventually lead to drugs for heart disease, if researchers can find out how to relieve pressure on blood vessels and other organs.

Last year’s prize went to three researchers who discovered the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough that led to cures for the deadly disease and tests to prevent scourges from spreading through blood banks.

The prestigious award comes with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (over 1.14 million dollars). The prize money comes from a will submitted by the prize’s creator, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.

The prize is the first to be awarded this year. The other prizes are for outstanding work in physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics.

Jordans reported from Berlin.