Laser holograms stimulate mind cells in mice to probe roots of notion and hallucination

Cecile G. Tamura

Behavioural evidence suggests that targeting just 20 neurons prompted animals to ‘see’ an image.

In new research, scientists used light to precisely activate cells in a mouse's visual cortex, re-creating the brain activity involved in seeing specific patterns.

That observation might help explain why disordered states—hallucinations, unwanted thoughts, and harmful actions—arise so readily in the brain. And single-neuron optogenetics may someday point researchers toward highly targeted ways of stamping out these states and treating symptoms of brain diseases.

"Imagine every neuron in the brain like a key on the piano, You can literally choose which neurons to turn on."

 “We don’t know how many cells it might take to trigger a more elaborate thought, sensory experience, or emotion in a person,” says Karl Deisseroth, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Stanford College in Palo Alto, California, who led one of many new research, revealed on-line this week in Science, “but it’s likely to be a surprisingly small number, given what we’re seeing in the mouse.”
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