Karl Deisseroth, a professor of bioengineering, psychiatry, and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, wrote in his important new book “Projections” that there is nothing more mysterious than eating disorders in biology, psychiatry, or medicine. It seems impossible to imagine how the human brain overcomes its evolutionary drive to eat, drink and survive. But what if it is not? What if we can not only see which of the 80 billion neurons in the brain are disrupting their daily activities, but also we can repair them with a beam of light?
These goals have fueled Deisseroth’s lifelong work. As a pioneer in the fledgling field of optogenetics, he has now written a concise and coherent guide to the future of psychiatry and the amazing potential of neuroscience.
Optogenetics allows experts to use light to activate or deactivate specific target neurons in the brain, thereby promoting or inhibiting related behaviors or responses. The process first introduces genes from specific bacteria or algae into specific brain cells and then directs the production of proteins that convert light into electrical current, a task that most animal brains do not have. Just target a specific subset of neurons (via what Deisseroth calls “genetic tricks”), make these neurons the only ones that can respond to light pulses, and then turn them on or off.
This is huge. The challenge of psychiatry has always been that, unlike cardiology, damage to the patient’s organ, the brain, is not observably recorded. Instead, it exists in an invisible neural communication network.. Deisseroth writes that optogenetics technology has allowed researchers to “peer into the brain’s inner workings, to explore how internal states of emotion are constructed at the level of cells, and to test how these elements of construction matter,”
Projections brings readers not only into the optogenetics lab but also into the hospital evaluation room, where we discover that Deisseroth’s faith in advanced neuroscience solutions is balanced with a commitment to speak therapy. While developments in optogenetics may lead to more successful psychiatric therapies, they may also call into question fundamental ideas about consciousness: “We now find ourselves in an astonishing position: We can pick out groups of cells that are naturally active during an experience and then … insert their activity patterns back in without the experience,” Deisseroth writes.
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