Optogenetics Enables Muscle Contraction Control
Jul 11, 2014 14:12:53 GMT -8
Post by Lαrα on Jul 11, 2014 14:12:53 GMT -8
This looks interesting..I was reading about the progress of Optogenetics and how it works by taking control of neurons' electrical impulses with light—to the spinal cords of animals that are awake and alert.
Im going to quote extracts from the article because there is no way that my understanding and interpretation will do it justice! 
Led by MIT Institute Professor Emilio Bizzi, the researchers studied mice in which a light-sensitive protein that promotes neural activity was inserted into a subset of spinal neurons.
When the researchers shone blue light on the animals' spinal cords, their hind legs were completely but reversibly immobilized. The work offers a new approach to studying the complex spinal circuits that coordinate movement and sensory processing, the researchers say.
When the researchers shone blue light on the animals' spinal cords, their hind legs were completely but reversibly immobilized. The work offers a new approach to studying the complex spinal circuits that coordinate movement and sensory processing, the researchers say.
In this study, Bizzi and Vittorio Caggiano, a postdoc at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, used optogenetics to explore the function of inhibitory interneurons, which form circuits with many other neurons in the spinal cord.
These circuits execute commands from the brain, with additional input from sensory information from the limbs.
These circuits execute commands from the brain, with additional input from sensory information from the limbs.
Now that they have demonstrated the usefulness of optogenetics for this type of study, the MIT team hopes to explore the roles of other types of spinal cord neurons. They also plan to investigate how input from the brain influences these spinal circuits.
"There's huge interest in trying to extend these studies and dissect these circuits because we tackled only the inhibitory system in a very global way," Caggiano says. "Further studies will highlight the contribution of single populations of neurons in the spinal cord for the control of limbs and control of movement."
"There's huge interest in trying to extend these studies and dissect these circuits because we tackled only the inhibitory system in a very global way," Caggiano says. "Further studies will highlight the contribution of single populations of neurons in the spinal cord for the control of limbs and control of movement."
source
). I like us all to be informed.
