Talking Back to the Brain: Using Light to Uncover the Language of Neurons

Presented by Andrea Yung, Christina Welsh, and Matthias Minderer

Studying the brain is like learning a foreign language – the language by which neurons communicate. Neuroscientists have made great progress by listening in on the neurons’ conversations. But, to be sure that we understand their language correctly, we have to be able to talk back to the neurons and then study their reaction. Optogenetics is a revolutionary new research technique that allows us to do exactly that. This technique equips neurons with the ability to sense light and convert it into the neuronal language of electrical impulses. Tonight, we start out with some background on the way neurons communicate with each other in the brain. We will then introduce optogenetics and how we can use it to manipulate the activity of specific neurons with flashes of light. Finally, we will dive into a few ingenious studies that used optogenetics to understand how neurons work together to give us the ability to think and act.