Fixed by Light: Flick a Switch to Banish Pain and Blindness
Parkinson's, blindness, chronic pain and more could all be cured using optogenetics – a revolutionary therapy that has just begun its first trial in humans.
Ed Boyden was a graduate student at Stanford University when he sparked a revolution. It was August 2004, 1 o’clock in the morning, and he was still in the lab, peering down a microscope at a single nerve cell. Curious to see how it would react, he flashed a blue light at it. Instantly, it fired. It was a defining moment, the birth of a technique that would revolutionize the study of brains and behavior.