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MIT Shows How to Shut Down Brain With Light

Posted by samzenpus on from the men-in-black dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The MIT home-page story today is about a way to use light to shut down brain activity. "Scientists at the MIT Media Lab have invented a way to reversibly silence brain cells using pulses of yellow light, offering the prospect of controlling the haywire neuron activity that occurs in diseases such as epilepsy and Parkinson's disease."

1 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Requires halorhodopsin gene by sshore · · Score: 5, Interesting

    According to the article, the yellow light "silences" neurons that have been engineered to include the halorhodopsin gene found in certain bacteria. The light doesn't have the same effect on the neurons that you'd typically find in your skull.

    I'm not sure how this would be used clinically to treat epilepsy. Perhaps by introducing the genes into cells in the affected area using a retrovirus?