Temporally precise, noninvasive control of activity in well-defined neuronal populations is a
long-sought goal of systems neuroscience. We adapted for this purpose the naturally …

Optogenetics is a technology that allows targeted, fast control of precisely defined events in
biological systems as complex as freely moving mammals. By delivering optical control at the …

Both observational and perturbational technologies are essential for advancing the
understanding of brain function and dysfunction. But while observational techniques have greatly …

Severe behavioural deficits in psychiatric diseases such as autism and schizophrenia have
been hypothesized to arise from elevations in the cellular balance of excitation and inhibition …

Synchronized oscillations and inhibitory interneurons have important and interconnected
roles within cortical microcircuits. In particular, interneurons defined by the fast-spiking …

Over the past 10 years, the development and convergence of microbial opsin engineering,
modular genetic methods for cell-type targeting and optical strategies for guiding light through …

Genetically encoded, single-component optogenetic tools have made a significant impact on
neuroscience, enabling specific modulation of selected cells within complex neural tissues. …

Our understanding of the cellular implementation of systems-level neural processes like
action, thought and emotion has been limited by the availability of tools to interrogate specific …

Natural rewards and drugs of abuse can alter dopamine signaling, and ventral tegmental
area (VTA) dopaminergic neurons are known to fire action potentials tonically or phasically …

Anxiety—a sustained state of heightened apprehension in the absence of immediate threat—becomes
severely debilitating in disease states 1 . Anxiety disorders represent the most …