PRIME: Fiber-Optic Fabrication Breakthrough Enables Advanced Neuroscience Exploration at WUSTL
Optogenetics is a neuroscience technique that uses light to precisely activate or silence genetically modified neurons, enabling real-time control of brain activity. Optogenetics was first demonstrated as a practical neuroscience tool in 2005, when Karl Deisseroth and colleagues showed that genetically modified neurons could be controlled with light.
Optical fibers enable optogenetics by delivering light to activate or silence neurons deep within the brain, but conventional fibers are limited to illuminating a single target. Studying complex neural circuits requires light delivery to hundreds or even thousands of locations, an impractical task with traditional multi-fiber approaches.