“Optogenetics has given researchers unprecedented access to the workings of the brain, allowing them not only to observe its precise neural circuitry in lab animals but to control behavior through the direct manipulation of specific cells. Karl Deisseroth, one of the rare neuroscientists who are also practicing psychiatrists, has made mental illness a major focus of his optogenetic research. Other scientists around the world are using the method to investigate some of the most stubborn riddles of neuroscience, including the fundamental question of how the physical brain—the nearly hundred billion neurons and their multitudinous connections—gives rise to the mind: thought, mood, behavior, emotion.”
– The New Yorker, “Lighting the Brain”
In optogenetics, genes for light-sensitive proteins are introduced into neurons or other specific types of cells in a mammalian brain. The cells’ activity can be monitored and controlled using light signals. Optogenetics has progressed rapidly from its beginnings in 2005, thanks in part to advances in supporting fields including photonics and micro-mechatronics.
