Among those who suffer from depression, the dual inabilities to experience enjoyment in things once pleasurable and to physically motivate oneself - to meet challenges, or even to get out of bed in the morning - have been documented for decades, though it has been mysterious why these very...
Researchers reporting online in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have for the first time shown that they can control the behavior of monkeys by using pulses of blue light to very specifically activate particular brain cells. The findings represent a key advance for optogenetics, a...
Recently, brain researchers have gained a powerful new way to troubleshoot neural circuits associated with depression, Parkinson's disease and other conditions in small animals such as rats. They use an optogenetics technology, invented at Stanford University, that precisely turns select brain...