An optical neural interface: in vivo control of rodent motor cortex with integrated fiberoptic and optogenetic technology

Neural interface technology has made enormous strides in recent years but stimulating electrodes remain incapable of reliably targeting specific cell types (e.g. excitatory or inhibitory neurons) within neural tissue. This obstacle has major scientific and clinical implications. For example, there is intense debate among physicians, neuroengineers and neuroscientists regarding the relevant cell types recruited during deep brain stimulation (DBS); moreover, many debilitating side effects of DBS likely result from lack of cell-type specificity. We describe here a novel optical neural interface technology that will allow neuroengineers to optically address specific cell types in vivo with millisecond temporal…

• AP
  American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education
• RU
  Ryerson University
• NI
  National Institutes of Health
• SB
  Stanford Bio-X