( ends. Potential applications ...)A 'traffic light' for neurons means 'go' for improving brain research

Potential applications

The most direct application of optical neuron control is to begin experimenting with neural circuits to determine why unhealthy ones fail and how healthy ones work.

In patients with Parkinson's disease, for example, researchers have shown that electrical "deep brain stimulation" of cells can help patients, but they don't know precisely why. By allowing researchers to selectively stimulate or dampen different neurons in the brain, the new Stanford technique could help in determining which particular neurons are benefiting from deep brain stimulation, Deisseroth says. That could lead to making the electrical treatment, which has some unwanted side effects, more targeted.

Another potential application is experimenting with simulating neural communications. Because neurons communicate by generating patterns of signals-sometimes on and sometimes off like the 0s and 1s of binary computer code-flashing blue and yellow lights in these patterns could compel neurons to emit messages that correspond to real neural instructions. In the future, this could allow researchers to test and tune sophisticated neuron behaviors. Much farther down the road, Deisseroth speculates, the ability to artificially stimulate neural signals, such as movement instructions, could allow doctors to bridge blockages in damaged spinal columns, perhaps restoring some function to the limbs of paralyzed patients.

Finally, the technique could be useful in teasing out the largely unknown functioning of healthy brains.

"One day we'd like to be able to understand the organization of the brain," Zhang says. "How do different types of cells communicate with each other to carry out very complex things like emotion or how people make decisions?"

Funding for the paper's authors comes from NIH, the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, the Max Planck Society, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German
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Source:Stanford University