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Neuroscience

Optical control of reward

Nature volume 458, pages 980–981 (2009)Cite this article

Is it wishful thinking that the behaviour of an organism as complex as a mouse might be controlled by modulating its intracellular signalling with light? No: this is just what researchers have achieved with an elegant technique.

Ever since the Italian physician Luigi Galvani discovered that frogs' muscles twitch when stimulated electrically, the integral role of electricity in the functioning of the nervous system has seemed clear. But there is also a growing appreciation that intracellular signalling pathways — which can interact with the extracellular environment through G proteins and G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) — play an essential part in the processing of information by neurons. Deisseroth and colleagues1 (Airan et al., page 1025 of this issue) now describe a powerful technique that allows intracellular signalling pathways to be controlled through the activation of GPCRs by light. Intriguingly, by modulating specific signalling cascades in this way, the authors can control behaviour in mice.

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Figure 1: Light stimulation, intracellular signalling and regulation of function in neural networks.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. David E. Moorman and Gary Aston-Jones are in the Department of Neurosciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina 29425, USA. astong@musc.edu,

    David E. Moorman & Gary Aston-Jones

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  1. David E. Moorman
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  2. Gary Aston-Jones
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Moorman, D., Aston-Jones, G. Optical control of reward. Nature 458, 980–981 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/458980a

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