Technology advancement for the health and advancement of humans - in the mini form. Scientists to the rescue! :)
Extracted from Wired.com
Figure 1: LED probes that are small enough to fit through the eye of needle.
This kind of device could potentially improve researchers’ ability to influence neural activity in live animals and measure a variety of physiological and biochemical processes, says applied physicist and neuroscientist Mark Schnitzer of Stanford University, who was not involved in the work. Such bio-compatible electronics also offer new possibilities for manipulating living tissue based on rapid feedback from sensors embedded in the tissue.
One obvious application in brain research is for optogenetics experiments, which involve genetically modifying neurons to make them fire in response to light. In recent years neuroscientists have used these methods to examine the neural circuits involved in everything from drug addiction, to depression, to Parkinson’s disease. But getting light to areas deep inside the brain is tricky.
Figure 2: Illuminated brain - an LED probe lights up a mouse brain.
In one experiment, the researchers implanted a probe into the brain of a mouse. Then they used pulses of light to stimulate neurons in a part of the brain’s reward pathway. Mice who received pulses in a particular arm of a Y-shaped maze soon learned to spend more time there, just as they would if they’d been rewarded with food.
In any case, tweaking neural activity is just a small part of what the probes can do. In addition to LED arrays, they also contain photodetectors, electrodes for stimulating and recording electrical activity, and temperature sensors that double as microheaters.
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