The first low-cost, easy-to-use optogenetics hardware platform will let biologists who have little or no training in engineering or software design incorporate optogenetics testing in their labs. The ...

The concept of optogenetics sounds almost too good to be true—making direct manipulation of brain activity literally as simple as turning on a light. But scientists have been using laser illumination ...

When Edward Boyden was helping develop a tool to turn neurons on and off with light at Stanford a decade ago, he had a strong feeling it would spread far and wide. Even so, he’s been surprised by how ...

Optogenetics likes to light up debate. Optogenetics is a hot technique in neuroscience research right now, involving taking a light-activited gene (called a channel rhodopsin) targeted into a single ...

Nobody likes a cheater, but Rice University bioengineering graduate student Karl Gerhardt wants people to copy his answers. That's the whole point. Gerhardt and Rice colleagues have created the first ...

What the scientists had was a lab version of The Dog That Didn’t Bark — or, if Sherlock Holmes were chronicling the experiment, The Mice That Didn’t Freeze. One at a time, the 20 mice went into a ...

The first time I learned that scientists could control neurons with light, I definitely did not keep my cool. My response was something like, “Holy shit, I had no idea you could do that!”—perhaps not ...

Optogenetics has ignited a revolution in neuroscience. Although this decree may sound like hype, researchers in the field disagree, saying the technique is allowing them to understand brain function ...

Researchers lighten the load and increase the channels for multi-site optogenetics. Now over a decade old, the field of optogenetics continues to play an important role in understanding neural ...

In what could one day become a new treatment for epilepsy, researchers at UC San Francisco, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Berkeley have used pulses of light to prevent seizure-like activity in neurons. The ...

Fermeate uses optogenetics—precise control of gene expression with light—to turbocharge productivity in bioreactors, with ...