When I first heard of optogenetics, I figured they had the idea completely backwards. optogenetics uses light from outside the organism to trigger actions inside cells in the organism. I thought the idea would be to put light-emitting genes inside organisms, and then "read out" the underlying biology. I learned only recently that somebody is working on adding fluorescence to cuttlefish to see "when neurons fire" (with spatial info), among other thiings: https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-engineere...
Of course my long game is to add cuttlefish-style "pulsing, glowing" tattoos to humans.
Calcium imaging of neuronal activity (see, e.g., https://alleninstitute.org/education-resources/how-scientist...) is a thing, and has been for a while. It does something like what you said: neurons that have been genetically modified glow briefly, which can be picked up by microscopy. It has many advantages (and some drawbacks) compared to more traditional electrical recording techniques.
"using light to read out from organisms" has been around since basically GFP. If you are looking for dynamics, some early work was done by, e.g. Alice Ting.
sticking fluorescence (and luminescence) inside an organism of choice is not particularly hard! just add a GFP gene and you're done. if you can do any genetics at all, this is one of the first things to try.
Of course, being able to see the fluorescence in a live organism requires it to be transparent -- hence the popularity of zebrafish embryos in evo devo.
I learned today that the initial Nobel's will stated that people should be rewarded for the discoveries made in the preceding year, but this quite often isn't followed which is understandable given the enormity of amount of work that goes into modern-day discoveries that are considered for Nobel prizes.
how hard is it with AI to do an optogenesis surgery on some mice and do some experiments with neural networks? would the AI guide you step by step, tell you where to cut, what to put where? I have no medical background.
Optogenetics is one of the most scify technologies I ever had the pleasure of working with:
Imagine implanting a light guide and then setting a translucent port to allow a pathogens safe way to couple into nerves deep inside the brain, imagine transient gene therapies that introduce channelrhodopsins and holographic projections that create volumetric excitation patterns.
Seriously, thinking machines are super impressive, but that stuff really alien in its possible applications.
My prediction is that true neural interfaces will be based on light not wires.
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[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 9.7 ms ] threadOptogenetics allows you to control neurons with light.
Of course my long game is to add cuttlefish-style "pulsing, glowing" tattoos to humans.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.211564598 (2001)
Here's an overview from Karl himself: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6814250/
Imagine implanting a light guide and then setting a translucent port to allow a pathogens safe way to couple into nerves deep inside the brain, imagine transient gene therapies that introduce channelrhodopsins and holographic projections that create volumetric excitation patterns.
Seriously, thinking machines are super impressive, but that stuff really alien in its possible applications.
My prediction is that true neural interfaces will be based on light not wires.