A new device could allow medical professionals to control brain cell activity using light.
"This is fantastic," Elizabeth Hillman, a biomedical engineer at Columbia University, told NPR. "We can turn things on, turn things off, read stuff out."
The device allows researchers to watch how the brain is behaving in real time, and control how the brain circuits behave.
The light-based method is dubbed optogenetics, and could lead to treatments for conditions such as epilepsy and depression.
Feats such as observing and controlling the brain were limited in the past to functional MRIs and wire probes. Everything changed in 2005, when a Stanford University team found a way to better-control brain cells using only light; this allows large groups of cells to be activated at once.
"There was instant buzz about it," Hillman told NPR. "People were sort of running around and saying, 'What is this thing, where can I get it, how can I do it?' "
"You can select that very specific genetic cell type, and you can tell that specific cell type to react when you shine light on it," she said.
In the future, researchers will have to conquer some "big challenges" before the method can be used to treat brain disorders.
"You're actually altering the genes of the neurons," Hillman said. A number of brain cells don't respond to light; so they would need to be enhanced with extra genetic material in order for the method to work. Conducting genetic engineering on humans is not currently an option.
Another solution to the problem is to infect them with a virus that reprograms cells, but this also comes with a number of risks.
There is also the issue of physically getting the light deep enough into the brain.
"It's really hard to get light to go deep," Hillman told NPR. "And we all know this just from trying to shine a flashlight through our hand."
Despite a number of other problems, the researchers still hope to find a way to effectively deliver the technique in the future.
The method has shown to be effective and stopping seizures in mice.
