Thanks to
Alex O'Connor 
on twitter.
Using light to control the brain through genetics.Algae and Light Help Injured Mice Walk Againhttp://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/mf_optigenetics/
or
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/mf_optigenetics/all/1 They’d shown that a beam of light could control brain activity with great precision. . The secret is that the mouse’s neurons weren’t normal. New genes had
been inserted into them — genes from plants, which do respond to light,
and the new genes were making the neurons behave in planty ways.
Genes are just instructions, of course. By themselves they don’t do
anything, just as the instructions for your Ikea desk don’t make it
leap together. But genes direct the assembly of proteins, and proteins
make things happen. The weird new plant proteins in this mouse’s brain
were sensitive to light, and they were making the neurons fire.
The counterclockwise-running mouse was something new — a triple
fusion of animal, plant, and technology — and the students knew it was
a harbinger of unprecedentedly powerful ways to alter the brain. For
curing diseases, to begin with, but also for understanding how the
brain interacts with the body. And ultimately for fusing human and
machine.
