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Neuroscience: Illuminating the brain

Nature volume 465, pages 26–28 (2010)Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 30 June 2010

Systems neuroscientists are pushing aside their electrophysiology rigs to make room for the tools of 'optogenetics'. Lizzie Buchen reports from a field in the process of reinvention.

The centrifuge tube was the first that neuroscientist Philip Sabes had held in his hand for 15 years. The small, polypropylene container, no larger than a AAA battery, held a few drops of liquid at its base. It looked like water but, Sabes had been told by his collaborators, it contained a high concentration of viruses — and he had to get them into the brain of a monkey. "Honestly, I really felt like I didn't know what I was doing," says Sabes, of his work last November at the Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). "I basically knew nothing about molecular biology. This was way outside my area of expertise."

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Authors
  1. Lizzie Buchen
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Lizzie Buchen is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.

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Philip Sabes' website

Loren Frank's website

Karl Deisseroth's website

Ed Boyden's website

Robert Desimone's website

Krishna Shenoy's website

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Buchen, L. Neuroscience: Illuminating the brain. Nature 465, 26–28 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/465026a

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