The fast-spiking neurons were now primed and ready to fire. All they needed was a spark, and the blue laser was that spark. When the scientists shined a blue laser onto fast-spiking interneurons infected with the engineered virus, they began to fire in sequence, 40 times each second, just like the scientists expected. The neurons fired as long as the light shined on them, from a few seconds to a few minutes. The neurons continued to fire after the laser was removed, but scientists didn't measure how long the effect lasted. The mice were anesthetized during the procedure, so the induced gamma waves didn't change how the mice behaved. "This is really powerful technology," said Edward Scolnick, Director of the Psychiatric Disease Program at the Broad Institute. "It allows you to turn on and off specific circuits inside the brain." This is still basic research, caution scientists, limited to the lab and years away from any clinical or therapeutic use. But Konstantinos Meletis, another MIT co-author, believes that the blue laser could directly treat autism, schizophrenia or attention deficient disorder. A much more likely use for the combination of laser and genetic engineering is to indirectly treat psychiatric diseases by helping researchers identify drugs that induce gamma waves, as well as just learning more about how fast-spiking interneurons work, all of which future studies at MIT will examine. "This is the first type of work addressing these cells, and theoretically you could expect that within years or decades this could be applied to human brains, but there is still plenty of work that needs to be done," said Meletis. Related Links: |
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