Lisa A. Gunaydin

TL;DR: Fiber photometry was developed and applied to optically record natural neural activity in genetically and connectivity-defined projections to elucidate the real-time role of specified pathways in mammalian behavior and captures a fundamental and previously inaccessible dimension of mammalian circuit dynamics.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the causal contributions of defined dopamine neurons to multidimensional depression-like phenotypes induced by chronic mild stress, by integrating behavioural, pharmacological, optogenetic and electrophysiological methods in freely moving rodents.

TL;DR: It is found that bidirectional control of specified midbrain dopamine neurons immediately and bidirectionally modulates (induces or relieves) multiple independent depression symptoms caused by chronic stress, and optogenetic recruitment of these dopamine neurons potently alters the neural encoding of depression-related behaviours in the downstream nucleus accumbens of freely moving rodents.

TL;DR: An engineered opsin gene (ChETA) is designed and validated that addresses all of the limitations of channelrhodopsin-2, profoundly reducing extra spikes, eliminating plateau potentials and allowing temporally stationary, sustained spike trains up to at least 200 Hz.

TL;DR: This work systematically compared microbial opsins under matched experimental conditions to extract essential principles and identify key parameters for the conduct, design and interpretation of experiments involving optogenetic techniques.