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NEURAL CIRCUITS

Hot topic in optogenetics: new implications of in vivo tissue heating

Nature Neuroscience volume 22, pages 1039–1041 (2019)Cite this article

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A new study by Owen et al. shows that widely used optogenetic light delivery can heat brain tissue and produce changes in neural activity and behavior in the absence of opsins. How will this finding influence experimental design in the optical age of neuroscience?

Optogenetic technologies have wrenched the idea of shooting lasers into the brain away from the domain of science fiction and established it as standard practice in the neurobiology laboratory. Today, the confluence of light-sensitive ion channels, viral vector technologies and transgenic mouse lines enables investigators to study the biological and behavioral consequences of toggling neural activity on or off with the flip of a switch; but what unintended effects might we be causing when we blast neurons with photons? In this issue of Nature Neuroscience, Owen et al.1 demonstrate that tissue heating caused by illuminating the dorsal striatum suppresses neural activity in medium spiny neurons (MSNs) and affects locomotor behavior. These effects were more pronounced with continuous light delivery, as commonly used in opto-inhibition experiments.

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Fig. 1: Physiological and behavioral consequences of high intensity light delivery into the striatum.

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Acknowledgements

D.C.P. is supported by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. S.L. is supported by a John P. Stock Faculty Fellowship and Rita Allen Scholarship. This work was supported by grants from NIDA (R01-DA042889), NIMH (R01MH112721), TRDRP (26IP-0035), the Rita Allen Foundation, the Wayne and Gladys Valley Foundation and the Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation.

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  1. Nancy Pritzker Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

    Daniel F. Cardozo Pinto

  2. Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Stephan Lammel

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  1. Daniel F. Cardozo Pinto
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Correspondence to Stephan Lammel.

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Cardozo Pinto, D.F., Lammel, S. Hot topic in optogenetics: new implications of in vivo tissue heating. Nat Neurosci 22, 1039–1041 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-019-0426-z

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