FEATURE NEUROPHOTONICS
Brain storming
Keely Portway looks at how some of the latest research into neurophotonics will help in the fight against brain disorders
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europhotonics, or the use of light- based technology to observe the brain and nervous system, has been advancing clinical research
and treatments for brain disorders for the past few decades. Advances have been made rapidly, with
increasing interest – and therefore funding – over the last 20 years. The development of new-generation tools, techniques and other elements has moved the field on, but with still more to do, there has been no resting on laurels for the industry’s leading
16 Electro Optics March 2021
research groups and academics. As the complexity of their work
increases, so too must that of the optical systems used. In the early noughties, the optogenetics
technique was invented. This uses a combination of light and genetic engineering to control the cells of the brain. Optogenetics is now used in brain research laboratories all over the world. In recent years, neuroscientists have used it to study increasingly larger groups of neurons in animals such as rodents.
In this process, neurons are genetically engineered to express a particular protein marker, such as green fluorescent protein (GFP). The presence of GFP causes the cell to glow green when irradiated by blue light, providing a visual indicator of neural activity. By fusing sensor molecules with these markers, researchers can engineer neurons that signal their local activity by modulating this fluorescence.
Latest developments One of the most recent developments in this area came from researchers at Caltech, who devised an advanced approach called integrated neurophotonics. They say that. with this technique, the activity of all of the thousands to millions of neurons in a particular brain circuit could be observed in real time. The work, detailed in a paper published in Neuron Journal, involved collaborators from 14 other institutions, and was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (Brain) Initiative grant, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the Kavli Foundation. The Brain Initiative, launched in 2013, was set up as a large-scale effort to accelerate neuroscience research by
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