Optogenetics and thermogenetics: technologies for controlling the activity of targeted cells within intact neural circuits.

ABSTRACT: In recent years, interest has grown in the ability to manipulate, in a temporally precise fashion, the electrical activity of specific neurons embedded within densely wired brain circuits, in order to reveal how specific neurons subserve behaviors and neural computations, and to open up new horizons on the clinical treatment of brain disorders. Technologies that enable temporally precise control of electrical activity of specific neurons, and not these neurons' neighbors-whose cell bodies or processes might be just tens to hundreds of nanometers away-must involve two components. First, they require as a trigger a transient pulse of energy that supports the temporal precision of the control. Second, they require a molecular sensitizer that can be expressed in specific neurons and which rend

SUBMITTER: Bernstein JG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3292652 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature