There’s been a fair flap lately about John Horgan’s argument that optogenetics and its potential have been overhyped by both scientists and some journalists (including myself, I think, from my inclusion in one paragraph listing “glowing coverage”). I like it that Horgan is pushing back a bit, because I think the field stands in danger of […]
Continue reading →Not making this up: A team of researchers has used light to make a mouse’s brain run better and relieve the mouse’s mousy version of depression. (Paper — a pdf download — is here.) This is potentially pretty big. For one thing, it’s what science writer John Pavlus would call awesome. For another, it expands […]
Continue reading →The ever-excellent Neurocritic has an interesting post looking at “lesion studies” of depression. As he notes, he was hoping for real lesions, from people who’d had psychosurgery years ago, but had to settle for a simulation study that used MRIs from a large sample of control participants.
Continue reading →