Viviana Gradinaru

TL;DR: It is reported herein that gut microbiota are required for motor deficits, microglia activation, and αSyn pathology, and suggested that alterations in the human microbiome represent a risk factor for PD.

TL;DR: It is shown that CLARITY enables fine structural analysis of clinical samples, including non-sectioned human tissue from a neuropsychiatric-disease setting, establishing a path for the transmutation of human tissue into a stable, intact and accessible form suitable for probing structural and molecular underpinnings of physiological function and disease.

TL;DR: This work used optogenetics and solid-state optics to systematically drive or inhibit an array of distinct circuit elements in freely moving parkinsonian rodents and found that therapeutic effects within the subthalamic nucleus can be accounted for by direct selective stimulation of afferent axons projecting to this region.

TL;DR: The results implicate specific BLA–CeA projections as critical circuit elements for acute anxiety control in the mammalian brain, and demonstrate the importance of optogenetically targeting defined projections, beyond simply targeting cell types, in the study of circuit function relevant to neuropsychiatric disease.

TL;DR: Subcellular and transcellular trafficking strategies now permit increased potency of optical inhibition without increased light power requirement, and generalizable strategies for targeting cells based not only on genetic identity, but also on morphology and tissue topology, to allow versatile targeting when promoters are not known or in genetically intractable organisms.