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From cudgel to scalpel: toward precise neural control with optogenetics

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Optogenetics is routinely used to activate and inactivate genetically defined neuronal populations in vivo. A second optogenetic revolution will occur when spatially distributed and sparse neural assemblies can be precisely manipulated in behaving animals.

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Figure 1: Manipulating neural assemblies with light.
Figure 2: Methods for two-photon photostimulation with ChR2.
Figure 3: Effects of dense packing of neural element on the precision of photostimulation.
Figure 4: Hypothetical scheme to manipulate distributed, sparse assemblies.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Vaziri, M. Hooks, D. Tank, P. Rickgauer and L. Petreanu for useful discussions, and M., Chklovskii for the reconstruction in Figure 3b.

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  1. Simon Peron and Karel Svoboda are at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Farm Research Campus, Ashburn, Virginia, USA.,

    Simon Peron & Karel Svoboda

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  1. Simon Peron
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  2. Karel Svoboda
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Correspondence to Karel Svoboda.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Peron, S., Svoboda, K. From cudgel to scalpel: toward precise neural control with optogenetics. Nat Methods 8, 30–34 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.f.325

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