MIT Shows How to Shut Down Brain With Light

An anonymous reader writes "The MIT home-page story today is about a way to use light to shut down brain activity. "Scientists at the MIT Media Lab have invented a way to reversibly silence brain cells using pulses of yellow light, offering the prospect of controlling the haywire neuron activity that occurs in diseases such as epilepsy and Parkinson's disease."

Slight problem with their idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the article:

When neurons are engineered to express the halorhodopsin gene, the researchers can inhibit their activity by shining yellow light on them. Light activates the chloride pumps, which drive chloride ions into the neurons, lowering their voltage and silencing their firing.

So, if we genetically engineer some people with Parkinson's or epilepsy to have these halorhodopsin neurons, we can give them a normal life as long as we find a way to shine light directly into their brains?

Re:Makes sense

[bindo]

Considering certain patterns of light, as found in some video games, for example, have the ability to bring about seizures and people the suffer from Epilepsy, it makes sanse that certain patterns of light would also be able to reverse that effect.

Considering certain patterns of falling boulders, as found on some mountains, for example, have the ability to bring death and people the suffer from Epilepsy (sic!). it makes sanse that certain patterns of falling boulders would also be able to reverse that effect.
NOT!

Common sense is not a substitute for knowledge. The two effects are not even related.

Re:Slight problem with their idea...

[mrbluze]

So, if we genetically engineer some people with Parkinson's or epilepsy to have these halorhodopsin neurons, we can give them a normal life as long as we find a way to shine light directly into their brains?

I think the article infers that we genetically engineer animals with Parkinson's and Epilepsy having the gene (that is, set up a disease model), then implant LED's into their heads, play with the lights and see what happens, then get a PhD and maybe even a Nobel Prize.

It's unlikely they would use this method in actual human therapy.

It's about brain implants for research purposes

[mrbluze]

Did anyone read TFA? It has nothing to do with light entering the eye and hitting the retina. Forget the strobe lights!

This study is great, because it means we can study animals better. It means researchers will get much more useful information from animal studies (instead of operating on 1000's of rabbits or something, they can do heaps of studies on just one rabbit), which will lead to new and better targets for drug research, better drugs, and perhaps a cure - way down the track.

Great!

[John Betonschaar]

Now all we need is a different type of light to activate some people's brains!

Re:Slight problem with their idea...

[kripkenstein]

No, actually the article directly implies that human treatment will come out of this:

"In the future, controlling the activity patterns of neurons may enable very specific treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases, with few or no side effects," said Edward Boyden, assistant professor

- so this is not just a case of a bad writeup of serious research, or a bad summary on Slashdot. It could be a quote taken out of context, though. In any case, the researchers think this (or something related to it) will be viable eventually, while I, for one, must agree with the grandparent post - how exactly will these light-sensitive chloride pumps get into the brains of already-living sick people?

I assume that the final human treatment, if any is arrived at, will be very different from what they are doing at present. Time will tell. In any case, a very interesting area of research, even if it is hyped a little regarding possible applications.

Re:It's a wetware debugger.

[TheObruniSpeaks]

Yes, both the "on" (channelrhodopsin + blue light) and the "off" (halorhodopsin + yellow light) work on millisecond timescales, just like neurons normally do. The halo paper itself in PLoS one has a great image of being able to assassinate a single spike in a neuron being fired at a typical rate. You can also record a neuron's normal firing pattern and "play it back" with incredible fidelity using blue light to cause the firing.

Re:There are easier ways

[The Relentless]

Using light? I've had a lot of professors that seemed to be able to shut down brains using sound. Generally their own voice was sufficient.