The book. One of the pioneers of research in optogenetics, Karl Deisseroth, professor of bioengineering, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, was keen to maintain a clinician activity. In this remarkably written first book, as inhabited by the “human stories” he has collected, he confides to the reader his own emotions in the light of those expressed by his patients. At the same time, he describes and analyzes the neural weaving of the brain, “mixture of electricity and chemistry [qui] enables everything a human mind can do – remember, think and feel”.
The emotion also lies in the way the author, recipient, in 2021, of the prestigious Albert-Lasker prize for fundamental research, explains how he draws on his imagination. “Insights from the literature have always seemed to me of the utmost importance for understanding patients, offering much more information about the brain than the best of microscopes”, he wrote. This creative sensitivity led him to consider ways to study the functioning of the brain system. The author says that at the end of his medical studies he wants to become a neurosurgeon, to understand the emotions at the level of the cells and their connections, thinking that he would have “the most concrete access to the human brain”. Then comes a “founding meeting” with a patient with severe schizoaffective disorder – passionate about James Joyce, he describes him as « the Finnegan of the care unit [en milieu] firm “. Upset, he then turned to psychiatry.
Stimulate brain neurons
“Caring for patients while inventing new tools for studying the brain” becomes his goal. At the beginning of the 2000s, at the head of Stanford’s bioengineering laboratory, he developed optogenetics, a technology making it possible to observe and stimulate cerebral neurons with light, directly and specifically. His work has led to great advances in understanding how cells create brain functions and behaviors. From studies on mammals, it is thus possible to record the processes related to feelings, to intervene on their representation, and thus for example, to modify the passive/active behavior of a subject faced with a difficulty. This technique, too invasive on humans at this stage, has so far only allowed clinical application for a blind man suffering from a neurodegenerative disease, who has been able to regain partial sight.
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