Recent Advances in Neurotechnologies to Understand and Direct Specific Behavior of Live Animals

Abstract

Neuroscience has traditionally faced difficulty in accessing and understanding the behavior of the brain at a single-cell level. Many of these challenges are due to the brain’s complexity; the brain has 100 billion neurons and well over 100 trillion connections and synapses, all operating at a millisecond timescale with functionally distinct circuits crossing over each other within microscale regions. However, starting with breakthroughs in the 2000s, such as fluorescent genetically-encoded calcium ion (Ca2+) indicators (GECIs)—where Ca2+ detection is used as a proxy of neural activity—and optogenetics—where neuron firing is controlled using light-sensitive ion channels in neurons—new advances in revolutionary neurotechnology have made it increasingly feasible for neuroscientists to understand how the brain operates on a cellular level. In the past few years, four distinct categories of neurotechnology advances have catalyzed this change in understanding, including chemogenic control, electrical recording and control, optogenetics-based control, and optogenetics recording and visualization.