United States scientists manage to turn behaviour on and off in laboratory mice
They manage to turn behaviour on and off in a bid to find therapies for neurological disorders
The mouse walked, the mouse stopped; the mouse ignored a bowl of food, then scampered back and gobbled it up, and it was all controlled by neuroscientists, researchers have reported.
The study, describing a way to manipulate a lab animal's brain circuitry accurately enough to turn behaviour both on and off, is the first to be published under President Barack Obama's 2013 BRAIN Initiative, which aims to advance neuroscience and develop therapies for brain disorders.
The point of the remotecontrol mouse is not to create an army of robo-rodents. Instead, neuroscientists hope to perfect a technique for identifying brain wiring underlying any behaviour, and control that behaviour by activating and deactivating neurons.
If scientists are able do that for the circuitry involved in psychiatric or neurological disorders, it may lead to therapies. That approach reflects a shift away from linking such illnesses to "chemical imbalances" in the brain, instead tracing them to miswiring and misfiring in neuronal circuits.
"This tool sharpens the cutting edge of research aimed at improving our understanding of brain circuit disorders, such as schizophrenia and addictive behaviours," said Dr Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, which funded the US$1 million study.
The technique used to control neurons is called DREADDs (designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs).
