Optogenetics combines optics and genetic engineering. It helps better understanding of the brain functions and even controlling it.

1. OPTOGENETICS

2. Objectives:
• We, doctors of the future, must seek
the knowledge of modern medical
fields
• Keeping pace with recent medical
achievements is essential for a better
future for our country.

3. Traditional Methods
• Neuroscientists traditionally study the
function of the brain by stimulating and
recording the activity of single nerve
cells with electrodes.

4. The rise of the field
• The idea of using light to start or stop
neurons in living animals was proposed
some decades ago by the famous Nobel
Prize–winning scientist, Francis Crick.
• The optogenetic method was pioneered in
2005 by Boyden and Karl Deisseroth at
Stanford University.

5. What is Optogenetics?
• Optogenetics is an emerging field that
combines optics and genetic engineering. It
helps better understanding of the brain
functions and even controlling it.
• “It paves the way for new therapies that
could target a number of psychiatric
disorders

6. What’s the idea?
• Viruses are engineered to infect
neurons with a special type of channel,
originally discovered in algae, which is
sensitive to blue light. Once a blue
laser shines on the infected neurons,
the channels snap open, ions rush into
the cell, and the neuron fires.

7. The advantage of the field
• The beauty of this optogenetic technique is
its specificity
• The virus is only injected into a very small
part of the brain, and only a certain class of
neurons. The sharp laser beam further
zeros in on a small portion of the brain.
• Drugs and electrodes have a much broader
reach

8. • the technique has been used to control and
explore neural circuits in fish, flies and rodents

9. Assumed future benefits of
optogenetics
• Knowing what causes the brain of Alzheimer
patients to fail.
• using light-emitting neural prosthetics to
replace the electrodes used in deep brain
stimulation, which currently activate or
silence a broad range of neurons.
• treatment of Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy
and depression

10. Ethical issues
• would optogenetics be used for mind-
altering drugs for personal recreation or for
making criminals more compliant?
• Who would regulate the techniques and
products made possible by optogenetics?
• These questions do not have easy answers
and the more complex optogenetics
becomes, the tougher the questions get.

11. References
• http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04
/lasercontrolledhumans/#more-4123
• http://www.laserfocusworld.com/display_arti
cle/367038/12/none/none/colum/A-healthy-
futurefor-optogenetics

12. THANK YOU