Latest Channelrhodopsin Stories

-- Boyden's application of ChR2, enabled breakthrough in neuroscience LIVERMORE, Calif., March 12, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation applauds Hertz Fellow, Edward S. Boyden III, Associate Professor in the MIT Media Lab and at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Boyden is among six eminent scientists who will share the 1 million-euro prize, awarded for their development of optogenetics, a technology that makes it possible to control brain...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Researchers from Stanford University have isolated the neurons responsible for determining whether or not exerting effort in order to complete a task is worth the energy that said effort will require -- a discovery which could help medical professionals better deal with depression and other brain-related disorders. According to the university, many psychiatrists believe that a person's "will to act" originates from the prefrontal...

DETROIT, Oct. 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- RetroSense Therapeutics, LLC, a Michigan-based company, announced that it has executed its exclusive, worldwide option and signed a license agreement for novel gene-therapy approaches for treating blindness developed at Wayne State University's School of Medicine. Zhuo-Hua Pan, Ph.D., professor of anatomy and cell biology in the School of Medicine, along with colleagues at Salus University in Pennsylvania, developed the breakthrough therapy and...

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A new technique that stimulates heart muscle cells with low-energy light raises the possibility of a future light-controlled pacemaker, according to this study."Electronic cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators are well established and successful technologies, but they are not without problems, including the breakage of metal leads, limited battery life and interference from strong magnetic fields," Emilia Entcheva, Ph.D., senior author of the study and...

Researchers at the medical university Karolinska Institutet have created a genetically modified mouse in which certain neurons can be activated by blue light. Shining blue light on brainstems or spinal cords isolated from these mice produces walking-like motor activity. The findings, which are published in the scientific journal Nature Neuroscience, are of potential significance to the recovery of walking after spinal cord injury."This new mouse model will impact the way in which future...

New tools show potential for treating brain disordersNeuroscientists at MIT have developed a powerful new class of tools to reversibly shut down brain activity using different colors of light. When targeted to specific neurons, these tools could potentially lead to new treatments for the abnormal brain activity associated with disorders such as chronic pain, epilepsy, brain injury, and Parkinson's disease.The tools work on the principle that such disorders might be best treated by silencing,...